Speeding hot spots reap rewards for Queensland State Government

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Speeding hot spots reap rewards for Queensland State Government

ROBYN IRONSIDE
The Courier-Mail
November 25, 2013 12:00AM


A BUSY CBD street with a speed limit of 40km/h is the happiest hunting ground for police speed enforcement operations in Queensland, with more than $3000 in fines issued from the site every day.

Data provided by Queensland Police Service shows Alice St in Brisbane city racked up a total of 2648 detections in the five months to September 30 - worth more than half a million dollars.

More than half of the tickets issued in Alice St went to motorists doing no more than 52km/h, or up to 12km/h over the speed limit.

The Captain Cook Highway north of Cairns was the second-most-lucrative site for speed enforcement, generating 2402 fines worth $494,964 in the same five-month period.

Herston Rd at Kelvin Grove came in third, with 2084 fines worth $368,251.

Hinkler Drive at Worongary, on the Gold Coast, generated the fourth-highest-number of speeding tickets - but recorded the largest number of speeds in excess of 21km/h over the limit.

William St in the city was fifth with 1822 detections, followed by Stuartholme Rd at Bardon (1819), Gympie Rd at Kedron (1719) and Old Northern Rd, Everton Park (1678).

Logan Rd at Holland Park (1662) and Boundary Rd, Coopers Plains (1655) rounded out the top 10.

Acting Inspector Steve Embelton, from the Road Policing Command, said police generally did not take into account how many detections were recorded at a particular site, relying on other intelligence to choose speed enforcement locations.

"Crash data, and complaints from the public can help decide what sites police operate from, but we don't keep going back to the same site all the time," Insp Embelton said. My comment "Yes they do in Rockhampton"

"A computer randomly schedules where the deployments are going to occur, although the actual police region can override that based on intelligence and what's happening at the time."

He said it was disappointing to see so many motorists speeding on Alice St in Brisbane city, which was an area of "high pedestrian traffic".

"It is disappointing that people continue to fail to obey the road rules," Insp Embelton said. "The law-abiding citizens don't have anything to fear - it is the ones who continually flout the law and put others at risk.

"If they don't want to abide by those rules, then they should surrender their licence and start walking because that's what will happen to them eventually."

There were 389,095 speeding tickets issued in Queensland in the first six months of the year - worth $78.9 million.

The majority of the fines were issued to motorists doing up to 12km/h over the signed speed limit.

*Figure is higher than number 3 because of the larger number of offences in the higher-speeding categories.
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