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DAILY EXPRESS Safety groups fury at spray that beats the speed camera. The American makers claim the paint coats the car registration plate in a transparent film which reflects the flash of the camera back to the lens and turns the picture into an unreadable white blur...
 Number plate spray, which supposedly defeats speed cameras, is proving a big hit with drivers..... In the US Captain John Lamb, head of traffic Police in Denver, Colorado, said the Photoblocker spray had worked in tests he had supervised....Fox TV network, which filmed the tests, also reported that it was surprisingly effective...
Daily Telegraph
Treasury makes £20m on speed cameras
By Brendan Carlin, Political Correspondent
(Filed: 02/02/2005)
Speed cameras are generating profits of more than £20 million a year for the Chancellor, new figures show.
The number of fixed penalty fines issued in England and Wales has soared seven-fold from about 260,000 in 2000-2001 to 1.8 million in 2003-2004.
 Last night the Tories renewed their call for a review of what they called "a stealth tax" on motorists.
As the result of a decision by the Government to promote speed camera installation by allowing councils to retain fines revenue to cover costs, there are now about 6,000 cameras across the country, 2,500 of them mobile units.
From April, only two areas in England - Co Durham and North Yorkshire - will not be covered by "safety camera partnerships", made up of councils and police, which oversee installation of devices.
The cameras, which first appeared on English roads in 1992, have to be sited in areas with a history of road safety problems.
Under the scheme, councils cannot profit from the revenue and any surpluses that arise go into Gordon Brown's Treasury consolidated fund.
The Government insists that speed cameras are good for safety, with an independent report last year claiming that the expanding network was saving 100 lives a year.
Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, said the vast majority of cameras had brought "real benefits in safety and prove that they are justified".
Motorists caught by the cameras have three points added to their licence and pay a £60 fixed penalty.
Plans to introduce variable fees, lowering them to £40 for less serious breaches but raising them to £100 for graver ones, may be included in the Road Safety Bill.
David Jamieson, the road safety minister, said that in 2000-1, with only seven safety partnership schemes operating, receipts from fixed penalty notices - then £40 a time - totalled £10.3 million. After taking into account £8.9 million expenses on installation and running costs, the Treasury made a £1.3 million profit.
But by 2002-03 the rapid spread of camera partnerships and the rise in fines to £60 resulted in a £68 million fines income and a Government profit of £14 million.
Provisional figures for the most recent year available, 2003-04, show that revenue has leapt to £112.2 million across the 35 camera partnerships. An estimated £20 million profit will go to the Treasury when the £91.8 million cost of installation and maintenance is deducted.
Last year John Redwood, the Tories' deregulation spokesman, raised the prospect of a Conservative government scrapping unnecessary cameras as part of wider plans to stop motoring being "regulated to death".
Tim Yeo, the shadow transport secretary, stressed yesterday that the Tories were not against cameras when they helped to save lives.
But he raised fears that the scale of Government profits meant that camera fines were becoming "a stealth tax".
An RAC survey, to be published next week, will say that motorists remain unhappy about the cameras. In a poll of drivers last year, the organisation found that 72 per cent of motorists thought speed cameras were "more about raising revenue" than safety.
The Department for Transport said the income from fines should eventually drop off as the cameras encouraged more people to drive safely.
• English councils raised nearly £1 billion from parking charges in 2002-3, 50 per cent more than when Labour came to power.
ON A PLATE: this flyer has been found on windscreens of hundreds of vehicles in Bournemouth
DRIVERS in Bournemouth are being offered a controversial product which claims to put them beyond the reach of speed cameras.
Photoblocker leaflets are being distributed throughout the town, offering a £35 service to ensure that number plates cannot be read if captured on camera.
The service, offered by Bournemouth-based dealer Gordon Forrester, has attracted a great deal of attention among drivers.
But it is certain to cause concern to police officers and to the Dorset Safety Camera Partnership, which operates the county's speed and red light cameras.
Leaflets bearing the words: "Flash! Bang! Wallop! NOT a picture!" has been attached to windscreens in the town's car parks. They offer to treat front and back plates for £35 and claim the treatment makes number plates invisible to flash cameras.
Mr Forrester, who took up the Bournemouth dealership last week, told the Daily Echo the transparent spray does not interfere with reading the plates day or night but bounces the light back when a flash is activated.
He said he does not encourage speeding but is simply offering to protect motorists who get caught on camera in certain circumstances.
"In some circumstances motorists go over the speed limit as a genuine mistake, when they are on a clear road and are not a danger to anyone" he said.
"There are too many signs on the roads and drivers often do not realize the speed limit has changed on certain stretches of road."
Head of Dorset police operations division Chief Superintendent David Burgess said: "We can understand how people may be tempted by the selling talk for this product, but they may find this to be an expensive lesson.
"In addition it is an offence to attempt to pervert the course of justice and I ask people to use their common sense."
First published: March 29 2005
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