JEDDAH: The recent announcement that speed cameras will give motorists a margin of 10 percent before registering a driving offense against them has not been welcomed by some members of the public, while others have expressed dismay at the continued bickering. Okaz/Saudi Gazette reported Wednesday the head of Traffic Police in Madina as saying the new margin of error was “not inconsistent with traffic safety regulations”. “On roads with speed limits of 100 kilometers per hour offenses will only be registered when vehicles travel at 111 kilometers per hour or more,” Muhammad Al-Shanbari explained. “Where speed limits are 110 kilometers per hour, offenses will be registered at 122 kilometers per hour or over.” Reacting to the news on the Okaz website, however, some motorists expressed their perplexity at the move. “It needs an error margin of 20 percent,” said one reader. “Ten percent is not enough, because if the speed limit is for instance 70 kilometers per hour then if I drive at 78, I get a fine of 300 riyals, but speedometers on different cars are different, and the variation can sometimes get as high as five kilometers per hour between one car and another, which means that I could be fined for going at 72 kilometers per hour in a speed limit of 70!” Another reader vented his frustration at the continued moaning over speed limits. “In America, for example, they have a speed limit of 85 kmph on expressways and states can be as far as 3,000 kilometers apart,” he said. “Life doesn't stop there just because of the speed limit, so why should it for us? We should respect the law and protect ourselves, and we would also then deprive Saher of our money.” The issue of money and increasing fines for failure to pay is a constant source of dismay. One motorist said he could not afford to pay the fines accumulating in his name. “They just keep on getting bigger, because I can't pay them,” he said. Traffic Police chief Al-Shanbari also announced in the report Wednesday that “undercover teams” have been tasked with “keeping an eye on the Saher mobile camera cars”. “Saher operating staff do not have the jurisdiction to move randomly or monitor whenever or wherever they want. They are subject to daily assessment to gauge their compliance with instructions from the Traffic Department,” he said. “The mobile camera vehicles are instructed to carry out duties at specific times and places set only by the Traffic Department.” That should ease the concerns of one reader who said that “any system should be subject to monitoring to assess its quality and effectiveness”. “Has there been any monitoring of the Saher traffic camera system since it was introduced?” she asked.
