RECKLESS approaches to driving – including excessive speeding and drink-driving – are a cultural problem in Jersey, the police chief has said as he revealed that the Island’s first mobile traffic camera has caught people at “very, very high speeds”.
And introducing road safety courses, crushing vehicles and naming employers of drink drivers were all mooted as possible solutions to combatting what Robin Smith described as among his biggest concerns as police chief.
Sitting alongside Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles, Mr Smith said that Jersey courts are regularly filled with people breaking the Island’s motoring laws, amid a culture which is too accepting of driving offences.
He said that “enforcement won’t be a fix” to changing the Island’s approach to offences such as speeding and drink-driving as it is a “cultural thing”.
Speaking during a Children, Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel hearing, Mr Smith also revealed that a mobile speed camera had begun to be deployed after delays to its use caused because “we needed to be absolutely satisfied that it was recording accurately” after issues with similar cameras in the UK. The camera has so far been calibrated to catch those going at least 20 miles an hour over the speed limit.
He said that already the camera had caught drivers at excessive speeds and that prosecutions were starting to filter through the courts. “We have had a number of noticeable recordings”, he said. “Some very very high speeds and seizures of vehicles as a result of that”.
“The most important thing for me is it acts as a deterrent, particularly when we use it covertly,” Mr Smith said.
“We have antisocial driving and we will hear that at night time where people are frankly tearing around the streets. That’s a different sort of speeding, of course. That’s antisocial driving. Speeding in Jersey has been – it’s been stubborn. It’s part of the culture.
“One safety camera won’t fix that. In fact, 12 safety cameras located in each of the 12 parishes won’t fix this. I think it’s a cultural thing.”
Together with antisocial driving and drug-driving, speeding was “easily” one of Mr Smith’s top-five concerns.
Justice and Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles added that seizing vehicles was “a good thing”, and asked whether vehicles should be crushed, she said: “I think it’s very interesting. I think it’s a salutary experience if your vehicle’s turned into a biscuit tin.”
She added: “Speeding is a serious offence – speeding kills. We know that, and our roads are not built for speed – quite the opposite.”
Mr Smith added that drink-driving was a major concern, particularly during the summer months.
“The panel may be interested to know there are eight people in court this week having been charged for being drunk in charge of a car, eight – a very large number – and there were three over the weekend,” the police chief said.
“How do you stop that? So this hasn’t been agreed yet, but we were as a team looking at how do we prevent this, including naming people’s employers overtly when they are found to be drinking and driving.
“Now we haven’t decided on that yet. We don’t even know if the laws allow us to do that, and we don’t know whether we will do it. But, what we want to do is think more creatively about what prevents someone getting in the car, having had too much to drink.”
While Mr Smith called Jersey’s drink-driving problem “a cultural thing”, Senator Miles added that the Island had no courses for offending drivers.
“It’s very interesting what the chief officer says about the acceptability of drink driving,” the minister said. “We don’t have drink driving education programmes here.
“In the UK, you have them for speeding and for drink driving. In Australia, they’ve got some interesting models in some of the states whereby you go for your drink driving course, but you have to take a member of your family and your employer with you.
“So, what that does is it kind of increases the shame, I suppose that you would say. They have been shown to have some quite good outcomes with that.”
