Harvey backs revealing speed cameras

Police and Road Safety Minister Liza Harvey says she would support making the locations of speed cameras public in regional areas including the Great Southern as a way of deterring speeding drivers and reducing the road toll.

In Albany attending a Liberal Party law and order forum today with local candidate Greg Stocks, Ms Harvey said measures to improve road safety needed to be considered after an “appalling” road toll last year.

Great Southern police traffic enforcement Sergeant Andrew Norton has said he supports making the locations public to act as a deterrent for speeding drivers.

Currently, only the location of metropolitan speed cameras is made public, but Ms Harvey supported the view regional locations should follow suit, but the exact location at a specific time would never be released.

“My view is you don’t get down to the specific locations but if they are deploying the camera and it’s going to be used over a 12-hour period during the day, for example, and the police post on their website or in the Advertiser or wherever saying it could be in these locations, that’s fine by me,” she said.

“We will always have covert cameras and overt cameras and that’s because people need to feel that they are going to get caught any time for speeding if they’re going to change their behaviour, but it’s also a message to the community about the dangers of speeding.

“I’m a fan of having the signs up and making sure people know the cameras are there because, as I said, the people we are catching are people who often don’t care and people who aren’t paying attention.”

Fewer than 10 community members attended the hour-long forum, with issues of road safety, roadside drug-driver testing, and methamphetamine in the community feeding crime the main topics of discussion.

Ms Harvey said more overtaking lanes on Albany Highway were part of the Liberals’ road safety strategy, believing the impatience of drivers led to many fatal and serious crashes.

“If we provide those overtaking lanes and safe opportunities for people to overtake, you get better road safety outcomes,” she said.