Safety camera identification

The Safety Camera Partnership have chosen Kingswood MapMechanics to provide mapping on their website for their latest scheme to reduce speeding around Somerset. The website, www.safecam.org.uk has been launched to provide drivers with the locations of safety cameras and the latest news, aiming to reduce road death and injury in the area.

Avon and Somerset Police, in partnership with local Magistrate Courts, Health Authorities, Councils and The Highways Agency, selected GeoConcept Internet Server from Kingswood MapMechanics to use with various scales of map data to illustrate the locations of the safety cameras.

With up to 32% of accidents relating to speed, Scott Fulton, Internet Development Manager of Avon and Somerset Constabulary, who developed the site, explains, ‘The Partnership aims to reduce both collisions and casualties, to inform the public to bring about a change in driver attitude towards speeding and red light running’.

Cameras are placed in high-risk accident spots, fixed cameras, for example, are positioned where there have been at least four crashes involving death or serious injury, notifying drivers of the cameras in these areas will encourage them to slow down.

As Scott Fulton explains “ what it (the website) is trying to achieve, by being open about the locations of camera sites is to encourage drivers to become more aware of their speed, helping to reduce casualties on our roads."

To find out about the safety camera locations, drivers can visit the website (www.safecam.org.uk) and click on the district they would like information on. A list is then presented with a summary of the number and types of camera in the area (ie fixed, mobile or red light), along with a list of all the individual camera locations. By selecting one of the individual camera locations, a new page is produced, complete with an interactive map at Level 1 scale with the camera plotted in the centre and surrounding cameras are also shown. The map can then be zoomed in and out through the six different scales of mapping, to show different levels of road detail and also give different views of surrounding cameras.

Scott Fulton commented, "We were pleased with the software and its ability to allow us to produce detailed maps which show the camera locations based on information that we fed into the system. We were also able to easily build a web front end to the system from which to call the map data.”

Following GeoConcept Internet Server training, Avon and Somerset Police were able to implement the system effectively themselves, as Scott Fulton commented, "The implementation went smoothly, and thanks to some useful preparation and testing we were able to launch the service quite quickly…Kingswood were helpful with their support of the software when it was needed."

The training explained in detail how to combine the mapping data with GeoConcept Internet Server and how to input and display their own data on the mapping.

The website has had a good response, receiving plenty of media coverage and with over 2000 visitors accessing the site within the first two days of its launch.