Dear Sir,
Although police call them safety cameras, most motorists will know them better as speed cameras. With some choice Anglo-Saxon adjectives thrown in.
Your revelation that one speed camera in Calvia alone traps more than 40,000 speeding motorists every year must make it in pole position to be crowned the busiest - and arguably the most money-spinning - in Europe.
To put that into context, the camera that papped the most drivers in the UK, according to latest statistics from the police, netted just 6,000 victims.
That infamous title went to a speed trap on the A1 in Lincolnshire, which generated around £600,000 in fines.
So the Calvia camera you highlight, on the Santa Ponsa-bound Ma-1 highway near Son Bugadelles, must be ringing in a mind-boggling amount.
You cannot put a price on the deaths and injuries such cameras prevent - and the money this also saves the economy. So the police approach is to to be applauded.
Yet it would be really interesting to know just how much money swelled the coffers in fines - and where it was subsequently spent.
And for those many readers who have been caught on this stretch of road and feel hard done-by, they can perhaps be thankful they don’t drive in Australia.
For there, in the state of Victoria, lurks reputedly the world’s most prolific speed camera - catching an average of two motorists every minute of the day. And dishing out fines that accelerated past the 11 million Euros mark last year.
Yours faithfully
Richard Chew
Calvia and Yorkshire
