A campaign launched at the beginning of January 2009 was run to help drivers identify and stay within 30mph speed limits. The campaign delivered a very simple message:

‘Street lights, but no speed signs mean the limit is 30′

The message was displayed on billboards across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. It addresses the common reason given by drivers for exceeding speed limits in urban areas; that they didn’t know what the limit was because there were no speed limit signs.

The campaign reminded drivers of information provided in the Highway Code. The Highway Code states that the speed limit in built-up areas is 30mph. It continues by saying “The 30mph limit applies to all traffic on all roads in England and Wales with street lighting unless signs show otherwise.”

In this area, there are 88 camera sites - 53 of which enforce a 30mph limit. With 60% of our sites enforcing 30mph limits, the authorities expect that the majority of offences would be detected for this speed limit. However, our figures reveal that for the previous 3 years, an average 96% of all offences were detected at the 30mph limit.

The ‘Street lights’ campaign addresses these figures and aims to increase motorists’ ability of identifying 30mph zones so that they don’t get ‘caught out’ through lack of knowledge and awareness. Educational campaigns like this coupled with publicity of our camera locations and the mobile camera enforcement schedule all ties into the Safety Camera Scheme’s efforts to combat speeding through education, encouragement and enforcement.

A spokesperson for the Safety Camera Scheme said:

‘The good news is is that speeding offences have reduced dramatically over the last 3 years with 15,000 less offences in 2008 compared with 2006. This indicates that more and more motorists are choosing to obey speed limits.’

‘However, there is still a lot of work to be done to bring this figure down further. Publicity campaigns like this and other educational programmes like the Speed Awareness Workshop all aim to reduce speeding and ultimately facilitate the authorities’ targets for reducing collisions and casualties on our roads.’