Never mind all this turning-on and turning-off of speed cameras. Most of the real advances in road safety seem to happen in Scotland.
A couple of months ago, for instance, road crashes at five Aberdeenshire blackspots were reduced by 100% through retexturing the road surface to improve skid resistance.
This would, I suspect, by regarded as a lost opportunity by English road safety-in-numbers partnerships, who would have slammed in speed humps, chicanes and cameras before you could say Banff.
Their solution would have had the twin advantages of bringing in cash (always a prime aim of road safety in England) and maintaining a solid accident rate to justify their own existence.
Understandable. Who doesn’t want to justify their own existence? Still, I prefer the Scottish approach on the grounds that it actually contributes to road safety. When it comes to contributing to the road safety industry, England is streets ahead.
Our northern neighbour should also be praised for its attempts to keep roads open, unlike my home city of Norwich, which closes as many roads as possible, either permanently or for an inordinately long time.
Scotland, meanwhile, has managed to put a Model T Ford on top of Ben Nevis – again. This was achieved originally a century ago, when apparently the roads in the Ben Nevis summit area were better and the car was driven to the top.
This time the car was driven successfully halfway up, but then deconstructed and reassembled at the top. I hesitate to mention this, because if the anti-motorist boys and girls at Brake get to hear of it, I suspect that they will recommend this method for all car journeys.
Could be useful in Norwich, I suppose.