Funding

It is important that the public does not (falsely) perceive that fine revenues are the main aim of enforcement activities. This decreases public and political support for speed enforcement and can on the long term lower the effectiveness of speed checks. To avoid the public misperception that speed checks are performed for financial reasons, one would need:

• Clear rules stating that speed checks may only be performed at locations with above average numbers of crashes and where speed can be assumed to be a contributory factor to the crashes
• A transparent accounting of cost and fines generated by enforcement programmes
• The possibility to invest the financial revenues exceeding the costs of the enforcement programme in traffic safety or traffic mobility measures.

Speed enforcement programmes can, for example, be funded on a 'cost recovery' basis. This means that the police, local road authorities, research and publicity institutes who are involved in the programme are allowed to recover the costs of speed enforcement from the fine revenue. In general this includes equipment costs, enforcement and processing costs, as well as communication costs for public information campaigns aimed at changing driver behaviour.