Speed cameras across Avon and Somerset are being switched back on, marking the beginning of a road safety project that will see a total of 29 static cameras become operational again for the first time since 2011. They were switched off when Government funding was withdrawn for the joint local authority and police Safety Camera Partnership. The Avon and Somerset Police force have bought six cameras from Somerset County Council and 11 from South Gloucestershire Council. Two are owned by Bath and North East Somerset Council, one by North Somerset Council, and nine remain the property of Bristol City Council. The cameras will be switched back on in a phased program, over the coming months, and revenue raised from them will be used to fund their maintenance and enforcement.
RedSpeed International Limited is working in conjunction with Avon and Somerset police to reactivate the static speed enforcement cameras. Outside of London, this will be the first implementation of RedSpeed’s new back office software suite; RedSpeed 360. One of its key features is that it can manage multiple sites from a single server, and if one site does go down, the remaining sites will continue to function normally. The RedSpeed 360 is a fully scalable back office system for the company’s RedSpeed, RedGuard and SpeedGuard Traffic enforcement systems. The 360 system is a suite of software to download, view check, report and export offences to third party evidence processing systems, which can also be used to setup, configure and tailor the camera sites, as well as retrieve statistical data from them.
The system is scalable in terms of the number of RedSpeed sites the user is processing. For a single site, a single PC can be used, and where multiple sites are supported, such as the Avon and Somerset system, the input load can be distributed over several workstations, allowing a true multi user system, with the database installed on a server environment via a secure private RedSpeed 360 network domain. Avon and Somerset Police’s Road Safety Superintendent, Richard Corrigan, said, “The ongoing work we have undertaken with our partners to reinstate static speed cameras in the force area is based on national research showing that cameras add value to road safety. Of priority issues raised with the police, 27% relate to speeding vehicles in our communities. Also, there was camera infrastructure worth more than two million pounds (US$3m) lying dormant on the roadsides in the force area. We believe that the static cameras can be operated in a cost-neutral way and that reactivating them for use alongside our mobile camera vans, will help in making our roads safer.”
