For the purpose of this dissertation, I will be evaluating:Procedures implemented to improve road traffic management. Laws enforced to target road traffic offences. Technologies that have been put into effect to tackle road traffic offences

Critical Evaluation of enforcements utilised to reduce road traffic offences

Introduction

For the purpose of this dissertation, I will be evaluating:

Procedures implemented to improve road traffic management.

Laws enforced to target road traffic offences.

Technologies that have been put into effect to tackle road traffic offences, how these technologies operate and the affects that they have had on the statistics.

Aims

To provide a clear understanding of the various approaches used to tackle road traffic offences.
Look into the latest road traffic technology and explain their use.
How procedures enforced have deterred road traffic offenders.
Study the law of road traffic offences.
To provide a critical analysis of the procedures, laws and technologies
Weaknesses within the system that can be addressed

Objectives

Discuss procedures that have been put into place and their effects.

To provide a description of procedures that has been taken up by cities to tackle road traffic and offences. To put forward the strengths and weaknesses of these procedures and how they may be improved. An example: congestion charges in London, and which may also be implemented in Birmingham, should other major cities also take this approach?

Identify the power the law enforcement has on road traffic offenders.

Provide a clear understanding of the laws enforced to tackle road offenders. Discuss if these laws have in fact reduced traffic crimes, research into statistics. Analyse what the law enforcement can and cannot do. State the offences and explain the penalties by the law enforcement agency.

Review technologies that are put into action for the deterrence of traffic crime.

Look into the different technologies that are in use, and provide an understanding use. Look into the history of previous technologies that have been enforced, this will show improvements that have been made over the years or show where operations have failed therefore demonstrating weaknesses.

Discussing aspects of what could be done to strengthen roads / traffic safety.

Research into future plans that may be put into operation, discuss their pros and cons.

Discuss how the local authorise can he help make the roads more safer example creating more 20mph zones. Look into the present system where the learners have to take a theory test which includes a perception test and then practical, compare the statistics of road traffic offences before an after the system was in place.

Literature Review

For the purpose of my dissertation I have conducted extensive research using various sources to attain the relevant information that I require. I have researched into literature provided by libraries, unfortunately I have not been successful in finding appropriate journal articles for ...

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Literature Review

I have found numerous websites that are beneficial, and I have found that using Athens has been very valuable as part of my research as it contains quite a few electronic journals and cases which are relevant to my dissertation.

I have also extended my research to newspapers, this is to help me gain some knowledge of any issues/changes that may occur in the near future to reduce traffic crime, or improve the management of the roads.

Provided below are books I have researched into, I have provided a brief summary of my opinion on the information provided from them.

Police Management, A.J.P.Butler, 1984, Published by Gower Publishing Company Limited.

I believe that this book is quite old however it contains some relevant material for police managers. This book would be useful when discussing how management of law enforcement has altered over the years.

Police Manual, Fraser Sampson, 2002, Published by Blackstone Press Limited

This book is more current which means it contains information on laws that are enforced today. Unfortunately, the book only contains one chapter of road traffic offences; it is very limited in the information provided. Nevertheless it is an inspiring book, which has provided me with interesting new cases and police ACTS 2000.

West Yorkshire Chief Constable’s Annual Report, Published by Target

This is a remarkable book, which seems to be more of a magazine. This literature has provided me with crucial statistics of road traffic offences, which will definitely be of use. It also offers a web site, which could be visited for more up-to-date information (). It looks at the trends of crime and traffic management performance.

Core Issues In Policing, Frank Leishman, Barry loveday, Stephen Savage, 2nd Edition 2000, Published by Pearson Education Limited

This book is written an edited by nationally and internationally academic specialists and senior police officers. It contains information on criminology and criminal justice.

The book contains cutting edge issues and focuses future policing, but I believe there is room for improvement on the road traffic issues.

I have visited the following websites using the google search engine:

http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/contractors/photo_enforcement/redspeed/

http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/contractors/photo_enforcement/gatsometer/

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_rdsafety/documents/downloadable/dft_rdsafety_028168.doc

http://www.lawontheweb.co.uk/motoringnews.htm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1750804,00.html

http://www.legalday.co.uk/current/roadtraffic.htm

From viewing the facilities that Athens has to offer and the extent of the information, I have found that this is a reliable source to use. Therefore I have decided that I shal be using Athens for electronic journals and articles.

Background

I shall investigate into all aspects of road traffic offences including statistics over the years. I shall also look into how technology and law enforcements have influenced the offence rates. I shall explore into these changes discover the reasons for the variations, this will be critically investigated to establish a realistic reason for the alterations. There is a diverse selection on the types of Road traffic Technology that are used and they all have a purpose, which play a vital part in bringing the offenders to justice.

Research Methodology

For this particular study I felt my methodology would be given through books, journals, magazines newspapers articles such as the guardian or the independent, electronic journals on the Athens database and the Internet. I will be examining all these areas to for facts, figures and statistics; this information will be used to make comparison, statements, discussions and recommendations throughout the project.

Positivism are people who believe in questionnaires they use all their five senses to gather information. The information gather is believed to be true and it’s in mainly used for statistics and a graph is generated upon the numbers. They look at things that can be measured and see if there is any relationship between any variables example cause and effect relationship. From here laws are devised.

A stimulus for example introducing road speed cameras and the response less accidents and less offences.

At present I feel a questionnaire will not be useful for this project because I personally think a questionnaire does not provide accurate facts because respondents are biased in views and the audienced that will be aimed at would be very limited, therefore will not be able to generalise from such a small sample. Therefore any information provided is most likely to be inaccurate.

However there are advantages of a questionnaire as follows.

It’s easy and quick to design the questions.
The questions are fixed
It’s cost effective and save time.
Respondents can fill in the questionnaire in their own time.
They are short quick answer.

The disadvantages of a questionnaire

The data provided can be inaccurate.
Small number of the respondents does not represent the population.
Incomplete or lacking questionnaire responses.
Biased views
Limited audience to aim at
Unable to generalise

A questionnaire gives you the results of people’s opinions on the road traffic offences, which could be measured. At present I do not intend to use a questionnaire for my primary research but I may in near future through my project.

My preferred method of obtaining data will be in interviewing the public a small sample of people.

The advantages of interviews are:

The routing of questions is made easier.
The questions can be given in a fixed order with a fixed wording & the answers can be recorder in a standard manner.
Face-to-face instance answers.
The interviewer can ask the respondents for the answers to be more precise and detailed.

The disadvantages of interviews are:

Time consuming
Questions must be normally be closed because of the difficulties of recording answers to open questions.
Questions can be difficult to design.
The respondent might not be comfortable and can give answers without much thinking which can be inaccurate.

Interviewing will be very helpful for my project, as I will be obtaining ideas and information, which I can use and discuss in more details.

This method gives an option of both kind of method quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative data can be measured for example how many road traffic offences committed on a certain road or the number of casualties per annum but it is unlikely you will get honest answers.

Qualitative cannot easily be measured but reflects some quality of what is being observed. Qualitative can involve in scanning an picking out certain key words or phrases. It can generate hypothesis to observe relationships and conclusions.

There are other methods that I have thought about but not considered such as focus groups, participants or case studies

Chapter Plan

In my Introduction I will be giving a brief of what my project is about and what aspects I will be looking into. My literature review will mention where I will be obtaining my information from such as libraries direct information from companies dealing with information technology or the police website to obtain up-to-date information. In my research methodology it will have information of what methods I will be using to obtain the information.

Conclusion

Information Technology is a key factor to making roads safer, technology not only protects but also deters drivers not to break the law. I will be visiting or getting information through post of different types of road traffic technologies used at present and future. My next step will be to get as much information on road traffic technology such as literature from journals and books.

I have set myself a realistic time scale to complete my dissertation so I have adequate time available so I can double check an make necessary improvements where needed.