3. BRING ROAD TRAFFIC POLICING BACK TO COMMUNITIES
Police Forces To Reinstate Locally-Based Road Traffic Patrols

There is no substitute for police traffic officers with local knowledge patrolling every community, known and trusted because they work in accordance with the 1947 Road Safety Commission philosophy. This will facilitate intelligence-led traffic policing with officers using professional discretion as to how best to deal with errant drivers, so as to replace the technocratic, impersonal, Orwellian methods currently normalised.

• We all see drivers every day who would benefit from friendly advice from a road traffic officer because their driving falls short of the Risk Model requirements. Traffic policing has been pared to the bone however, meaning that these, and other more egregious drivers who need much firmer action escape attention.
  
  
• The State has a duty to protect citizens from the very worst drivers by keeping them off the road. These include disqualified drivers and criminals driving stolen cars on false plates, under the influence of drink or drugs or on crime sprees. It is an outrage that only 5% of car thefts are detected for example, yet stolen cars and cars used in crime are disproportionally involved in serious and fatal crashes.
  
  
• Unfortunately the advent of camera technology coupled with the ‘Vision Zero’ mentality has allowed Transport Ministers to distance themselves from their road safety responsibilities. Where lives are at risk we deserve better, especially as governments have squandered billions of pounds of taxpayer money on luxury projects before first securing fundamental services such as roads policing.
  
  
• We are the sixth wealthiest country in the world and it used to be possible to fund roads policing in the past before the advent of speed cameras. It can be funded again with political will. Speed cameras are policing on the cheap and have led to an egregious deception being visited on the public, especially some fatal accident victims who might still be alive today had police patrols not been removed.
  
  
• Adopting this reform then would have multiple collateral benefits for both accident and indeed crime prevention, especially if professional road traffic officers were to be community based as Reform 5 envisages. That will enable them to regain the trust and respect of local people in the community who would then come forwards and tell them things that they can act upon to nip problems in the bud.
  
  
• None of this is rocket science but successive governments have chosen not to do it, preferring instead to be seduced by technology in the vain hope of doing effective policing on the cheap. A return to tried-and-tested in-person policing would start to rebuild trust between the police and communities; something which it is impossible to put a price on.

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