Roger Johansson has been writing off-topic about speed cameras and his belief that they make driving much more stressful and unsafe.

I live in Northamptonshire in the UK which is well known for its excessive use of speed cameras. They’re everywhere to the point that you really notice the difference when you leave and enter the county. And I can testify that stress levels drop dramatically when you leave, and that driving becomes a wholly different experience.

A few years back, my family and I were involved in a head-on collision with a lorry at speed. This was due to someone else’s reckless driving. It should have killed all of us outright, but somehow we managed to stumble away with just aches and nightmares. Yet despite this first hand experience, I still believe that todays roads are more dangerous with the cameras (and other traffic calming measures) than without.

Speed cameras detach the driver from the responsibility or driving safely. There’s a growing mentality that the absence of a camera’s means that a road is un-dangerous. And in our county in particular, the excessive number of cameras also causes divers to view them as an enemy of inconvenience rather than as a guardian of safety.

There’s genuine animosity towards them which translates into aggressive bravado by some as they drive past.

There’s no doubt that they work. They slow traffic, and they turn danger hot-spots into cooler spots. But I genuinely believe that they also encourage a more reckless approach to driving in areas where cameras are absent.