Police get green light to set speed cameras wherever they want

Under new Government regulations, mobile police squads will set up randomly to catch "surfing" drivers who slow down at camera sites before speeding up again.

The aim is to create "uncertainty" in the minds of drivers and promote the sense that they could be prosecuted at any time in any place.

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It is set to accelerate the number of drivers with points on their licence from six million to 10 million.

The move comes as insurance bosses say that the proliferation of speed cameras is now so widespread that getting points on your licence is no longer an indication that a driver is a greater risk on the road - and that even motorists with up to nine points may not pay any more for their premiums.

Police in Cumbria are set to be the first county to take advantage of a recent relaxation in the rules governing the positioning of cameras.

Mobile camera teams will be able to operate on any road and will sometimes work in pairs, with camera vans placed a mile or two apart, to catch drivers who accelerate back over the speed limit.

Other speed camera partnerships - usually comprising the police, local councils, magistrates and road safety groups - are expected to adopt a similar approach if it improves road safety.

Until last month, police and local authority partnerships were forced to focus almost all their enforcement on roads where there had been at least three crashes resulting in death or serious injury in the previous three years.

But new guidance from the Department for Transport gives the police much greater discretion over how they use cameras.

Cumbria Safety Cameras said it was seeking "to create uncertainty in the driver's mind about where cameras will be".

It said it had cut deaths and serious injuries by 70 per cent at its 50 fixed camera sites but has found that serious crashes have risen elsewhere.

There were 59 deaths last year, up from 45 in 2005.

A spokesman for the speed-camera group said: "We need to tackle the behaviour of drivers who attempt to manipulate the system.

"The random element will mean drivers can never be sure that they will not come across a camera on a particular road.

"If they pass one camera van, they will have to think twice about putting their foot down because there could be another van down the road."

He said that Cumbria was adopting the new policy after studying research from Queensland, Australia, which showed that random camera deployment was twice as effective at reducing crashes as focusing on well-known sites.

Ministers have insisted that cameras are there for road safety, rather than raise cash.

That is why - under pressure - both they and the police have allowed drivers to have satellite positioning systems, which alerts them when they are approaching cameras sited at accident black spots, and reminding them to keep to the limit.

However, Cumbria's random approach means that these systems will no longer be as effective

Cumbria's own research found that 15 per cent slowed down only briefly at a camera site on a 40mph road.

This group approached the site at a speed of at least 48mph, slowed down to just under the speed limit for 300 yards before accelerating to at least 52mph.

Insurance bosses say they no longer assume that drivers with points on their licence are a greater risk on the road, because they are becoming so commonplace.

With more than 6,000 speed cameras on Britain's roads catching an estimated two million speeders each year, an unblemished licence is becoming rare.

The number of drivers with points exceeds six million - and is on course to top 10 million.

More than a million motorists are now just one conviction away from losing their driving licences while the number of drivers on the brink of losing licences has risen by more than 215,000 in the last 12 months alone.

The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety said: "Other authorities will be under pressure to follow Cumbria's lead if the policy works."

But Paul Smith of road safety group SafeSpeed said: "Modern road safety policy, particularly speed cameras, criminalises millions and actually increases road deaths."