Cost of speed awareness courses to increase to fund speed cameras

As the government continues to find ways to increase revenue, one of the ways that this can be done is to penalise bad drivers for speeding and accidents. Currently if caught speeding, you face three penalty points on your licence and also a fine of £60. New measures will be brought in to encourage motorists who speed to go on speed awareness courses instead as this will generate more income to keep speed cameras on as funding cuts mean that there will be many that will be switched off.

Currently speed awareness courses range in price depending on where you live; on average you can expect to pay £70 and it usually consists of 6 hours of workshop and classroom based teaching to show drivers the dangers of speeding and the consequences. Most courses are only a day but some places can split it to two half day classes. The new move will mean that the price for speed awareness course will rise to £100 if not more for a one day workshop on speeding.

Soon drivers who break the speed limit by going up to 10mph over will be given the choice to go on speed awareness courses rather than being fined and given penalty points. Those who break the speed limit by more than 15mph will still be fined and given points on their licence. Many younger motorists will welcome this move as paying £100 for attending speed awareness programmes will be better than receiving penalty points. New drivers who have held their licence for less than two years receive double the amount of penalty points and find that they are soon disqualified from driving but having the option to pay £100 for a day's course will be welcomed by many.

Repeat offenders will not be given the chance to go on the speed awareness course and will have to pay the £60 fine and receive 3 penalty points.

As our coalition government has cut the budget for road safety, this has been seen as the only way to generate stable income to cover the cost of running and maintaining speed cameras. With cameras already turned off in parts of the country such as Oxfordshire, councils are confident that with this new proposal, cameras turned off due to budget cuts will soon be turned on again.

Internet forums have already started talking about the new proposal with many branding it as a waste of resources. There have been places nationwide that stopped the use of speed cameras as they found that they did not reduce the amount of accidents. Swindon have found that since they abolished speed cameras, accidents have reduced and roads are safer but research argues that speed cameras save an estimated 800 lives a year.