HE'S a former traffic supervisor and veteran of the police force, but John Carrero says the positioning of mobile speed camera vehicles "irks me greatly".
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Although initially reticent to raise his concerns, Mr Carrero says a recent trip along Lake Road proved a tipping point.
"I observed one of these vehicles operating on Lake Road between Central Road and Barton Crescent in the past week," he said.
"Unlike our old police camera cars, which were clearly identified as a police vehicle, these camera cars operating now in NSW are white utilities with white canopies and have silver and orange striping on the bottom of both sides, which for all intensive purposes they resemble nothing more than a council or other work vehicle.
"[My concern] is that this mobile speed camera car was parked outside the butcher and other shops in Lake Road and in amongst other parked vehicles, therefore completely camouflaged to passing traffic. The purpose of these camera cars, apparently, is to reduce speed related road trauma.
"[But] it irks me greatly when I see these cars being operated in areas where clearly it has nothing to do with reducing road crashes and trauma," he said.
"I can tell you from experience that there has not been a serious crash of any description in that section of Lake Road for over 17 years. So the question has to be asked: 'why is it parked there, between other cars in a 50kph area, during the middle of the day?'."
Mr Carrero said the mobile speed camera vehicles are now privately owned and operated within NSW and, he says, the positioning and operating placement has nothing to do with the impacting or the reduction of road trauma.
Executive director centre for road safety Bernard Carlon said mobile speed cameras are placed in locations based on the site selection criteria outlined in the NSW Speed Camera Strategy this includes crash history, a high crash risk, police or community nominated locations.
"The Lake Road location was identified as a mobile speed camera site because of the crash history at this location," he said. "From 2007 to 2011, prior to conducting enforcement at this location, there was 54 crashes resulting in one fatality and 37 injuries.
"The Hastings River Drive location was identified as a mobile speed camera site because of the crash history at this location. From 2007 to 2011, prior to conducting enforcement at this location, there was 126 crashes resulting in 83 injuries.
"Speed cameras play an important role in supporting speed enforcement conducted by NSW Police," he said.
But Mr Carrero said mobile speed cameras were operated under strict guidelines which included the car's signage, the positioning of the cameras, and the direction they could be operated.
"We referred to this usage as 'grids' ... and these grids were identified by traffic collision history data and in other areas where the speed of cars exceeded the 75 percentile.
"In other words we could not operate the cars anywhere we liked," he said.
Fact file:
* Mobile speed cameras are managed by the Roads and Maritime Services. Private contractors, Redflex and Jenoptik, operate the cameras under contract. In the Port Macquarie/Hastings area they are operated by Jenoptik.
* The specific enforcement sites at each location are selected that meet the technical requirements of the speed measurement and camera devices and are safe for the mobile speed camera to operate.
* Roads and Maritime Services conduct site surveillance of mobile speed camera locations to ensure the private contractors set up correctly with the signage and vehicle in the correct location, and clearly visible.
* All speed cameras in NSW are signposted and mobile speed camera vehicles are clearly marked with brightly coloured markings and signage is placed 250 metres before, 50 metres before and up to 50 metres after the vehicle.
