When a limit is not actually the limit
All hell broke loose last week after the news came out that one of Malta’s many speed cameras, the one in Siġġiewi, to be precise, had had its tolerance limit removed.
The first thought that comes to mind is that the ‘speed camera’ and ‘tolerance’ should never be used in the same sentence. All roads have a speed limit, the definition of which is; ‘a restriction on the size or amount of something permissible or possible.’
Motorists were complaining that that they were being fined for driving at 61.5 km/h, just 1.5 km/h over the limit, in Siġġiewi. People who step over the line should be prepared to accept the consequences. Our laws and regulations cannot be stretched like a rubber band. But this is not the case in Malta, it seems, because the tolerance mechanism was re-introduced. Reported plans to adopt a zero-tolerance policy were scrapped as soon as the electorate signaled its disapproval.
Speed limits exist for a reason; road safety. Allowing people to go over the limit can never be a good idea. What is worse is that in Malta the Local Enforcement System Agency (LESA), which is the agency responsible for local wardens, has officially made the announcement (that there is a 10% tolerance). It has essentially made everyone aware that we can abuse the speed limit by 10%.
A 10% tolerance means that drivers who drive at
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67 km/h in a 60 km/h zone will not be fined. Where cameras are set at 70 km/h, drivers can drive at 77 km/h, and so on.
The existence of a tolerance limit stems from the need “to compensate for speedometer variances,” because in older days speedometer specifications allowed for a 10% variance. But the situation has changed over the years. The EU, for example, has specific legislation which says that speedometers can never give readings that are below the actual speed of the vehicle. This means that it should not be possible to inadvertently speed because of an incorrect speedometer reading.
This has led some countries to adopt a less lenient approach. Germany, for example, has a speed camera tolerance of just 3km/h. In some parts of Australia they only allow for an extra 2km/h. Maybe Malta should follow suit and move towards increased safety rather than fewer complaints.
The authorities could also consider marginally raising the speed limits of certain cameras, say, from 60 to 65km/h, but then remove tolerance altogether. Drivers should also be more responsible. If the limit is 60 km/h then you should not drive past the camera at exactly the same speed. We have seen countless road safety adverts warning that an extra few km/h of speed can lead to a longer braking distance and, as such, a greater chance of hitting a pedestrian. So let us do things correctly, for once, and make our roads safer, not more perilous.
All this hullaballoo about speed cameras comes hot on the heels of another fantastic piece of news; the announcement that wardens have adopted a more lenient approach and will only issue warnings, for the first offence, in the case of six traffic contraventions. The most series of these is certain cases of illegal parking, including double parking.
Parliamentary Secretary Stefan Buontempo had justified the leniency by saying that wardens should not be a money-making machine and that the government wanted to address a barrage of complaints from motorists who had been slapped with a fine for minor offences “like stopping in a yellow line for a couple of minutes to pick up medicine from a pharmacy.”
To be fair, the speed camera tolerance mechanism was introduced by a PN administration almost a decade ago. That, however, does not mean that the current administration cannot change this.
But then again, the election is near, possibly just around the corner, and politicians (from both sides of the spectrum) are not really going to resort to unpopular decisions at this time of the year, are they?