WILL STEALTH SPEED CAMERAS BECOME THE NORM?
Police forces around the UK could be ramping up the number of unmarked camera vans
FOR JUST OVER a year, Northamptonshire Police’s Safer Roads Team have been using a stealthy, unmarked safety camera van alongside their fleet of fully marked vehicles to nab speeders at sites across the county.
After its first full year in use the van is now a permanent addition to the police’s arsenal – and other forces across the country are thinking of using one too.
Speed cameras have been a fact of life in the UK since 1991, but they really hit their stride at the turn of the millennium with the formation of so-called ‘safety camera partnerships’ that were able to retain the revenue from fines and plough it back into the project.
During that decade the emphasis started to shift from fixed sites – the yellow boxes, often referred to as ‘Gatsos’ even though they’re often from other brands, including Truvelo – towards mobile cameras, often in
‘The unmarked van often detects more offences than a marked unit would’ NORTHAMPTONSHIRE POLICE
vans. One of the main reasons for this shift is that the ring-fenced funding of the safety camera partnerships was removed in 2007, leading to many fixed speed cameras around the country being turned off.
Northamptonshire is one of those areas. Its fixed speed cameras (apart from those on motorways) were deactivated more than a decade ago – although they remain in place as a deterrent – with the focus turning instead to mobile cameras that could be deployed as necessary to recognised speeding or accident hotspots.
But the idea of a discreet mobile speed camera is relatively unfamiliar. The arrival of speed cameras in 1991 was softened by the decision to paint them bright yellow and the convention has generally remained to keep cameras overt, even with the advent of mobile camera vans.
Similar impact
Evidence suggests that, when it comes to accident reduction, both overt and covert cameras have a similar effect. A 2016 meta-analysis of multiple studies into speed cameras around the world, co-funded by the College of Policing, found that “while both covert and overt cameras led to a
reduction in speeding when compared to no cameras, there was no evidence that the effects differed between camera types”.
Unsurprisingly, Northamptonshire’s decision to introduce an unmarked camera van – created by simply taking an existing vehicle and giving it a dull grey wrap – attracted national press when it was first spotted in use. Now, with more than a year of operation under its belt, we asked Northants Police what prompted the unmarked camera van’s introduction and whether it’s working as they anticipated.
A force spokesperson told us: “Unmarked mobile enforcement within Northamptonshire began in December 2022 in response to the high level of collisions resulting in death or serious injury. It was introduced in an attempt to do something different to try to decrease the numbers of those injured on our roads.
“The unmarked van sits alongside our fleet of fully marked enforcement vehicles, which are still our primary enforcement vehicles.”
And the van catches more speeders than other cameras, as the force spokesperson confirmed. “The unmarked van will often detect more offences at a location than the marked unit would. This is in part due to a lack of pre-warning from other road users.”
More to come
Despite early reports that the unmarked van was a trial, the force has confirmed it was always intended to be a permanent addition, so it will definitely be a fixture for the foreseeable future.
Other forces are also showing an interest, with Northants Police confirming that “there are a number of police forces who have contacted us with a view to replicating the use of unmarked enforcement vehicles in their area.”