An £80 fine just for sleeping in my car? So THAT's what all the CCTV
cameras are really for...
By David Jones
Last updated at 7:48 AM on 20th May 2009
The not-so startling revelation by Home Office-funded researchers
yesterday that Britain's 4.2 million CCTV cameras do virtually nothing
to reduce crime poses a rather pertinent question.
If Big Brother is utterly useless in protecting us from muggers, knife-
wielding gangs and shoplifters, what is he really there for?
By chance, a couple of weeks ago, in a bizarre episode that emphasises
just how intrusive these ubiquitous digital spies have become as they
record our every waking (or in this case sleeping) move, I finally
discovered their true purpose.
Exhausted after covering a particularly harrowing story in South
Yorkshire, I really ought to have checked into a hotel for the night. As
it was a Friday, however, and I was keen to get home for a family
weekend, I decided to drive the 250 miles back to Surrey through the
small hours.
Somewhere along a dark, lonely stretch of the M40, the foolishness of
this decision became apparent. The lights of a lorry in front of me
began to blur, and the blare of a horn jolted me into the realisation
that I had veered without indicating into the next lane.
Fortunately, before I fell asleep at the wheel, I saw a sign that seemed
to be aimed directly at me. 'Tiredness Can Kill. Take a Break,' it
urged. So I pulled in to the next service station - Moto at Cherwell
Valley in Oxfordshire - and parked in the near-deserted car park.
I noticed signs saying CCTV was monitoring the area, and felt reassured
that I would not be the victim of crime. I wound the seat back as far as
it would go, locked the doors and fell into a deep sleep.
The time was then 12.35am, and it is a measure of how exhausted I was
that exactly three hours and 17 minutes had ticked by before I woke up,
bought a reviving cup of hot chocolate and a sandwich, and continued my
journey. It was then 3.52am.
How can I be so precise? Well, because these were the times stated on
the fixed penalty notice that dropped through my letter-box a few days
later, informing me that, as I had 'failed' to buy an £8 parking ticket,
I had been fined £80. I had the right to appeal, but if I coughed up
straight away, without making a fuss, £50 would do nicely.
Eighty quid? For taking the safe option and nodding off at a motorway
service station instead of in the fast lane?
Call me out of touch, but until then I had no idea that you had to pay
to park at the services at any time, let alone at 3am. Wasn't this the
very reason these dreadful pit-stops existed? They weren't built to
provide edible food, that's for sure.
As my astonishment gave way to anger, I began to ask questions. If I had
parked illegally, why hadn't someone put a ticket on my windscreen - or
better still, roused me from my slumbers with a friendly tap on the
window and told me to be on my way?
It turned out, of course, that no human parking attendant had been on
duty that night - probably because employing someone to book the
occasional forgetful or weary motorist would have been far too
expensive.
Rather, I had been trapped by CCTV cameras which filmed my battered old
Saab entering and leaving the service area, allowing someone - or some
machine, more likely - to discover that no ticket had been bought for a
vehicle bearing its registration number.
Apparently, there were signs directing me to pay for a stay of longer
than two hours, either at the nearby shop and restaurant, or by mobile
phone. But these were hardly visible to a bleary-eyed motorist at the
dead of night.
Indeed, with a little detective work, I discovered that I wasn't the
only innocent victim of the services snoop. A member of Moto's staff
told me how, farcically, several of his colleagues had also been issued
with fine notices simply for driving to work, because their number-
plates hadn't been logged in the system.
When I kicked up a fuss, my penalty was at least waived (not because I
write for a national newspaper, I'm sure).
But Moto and CP Plus, the Hertfordshire-
company that polices the forecourts, remained adamant that electronic
surveillance is vital to deter criminals and rogue commuters, who would
otherwise use service stations as glorified park-and-ride lots.
Perhaps so, although this week's report, funded by the Home Office and
co-written by reputable Cambridge University criminologist Professor
David Farrington, concludes that, while CCTV does seem to reduce car-
park crime in some targeted areas, it is otherwise pretty ineffectual.
In any case, I suggest another reason why these infernal machines have
been sprouting up like wisteria in recent years, so that there is now
one camera for every 12 people in Britain, making ours the most watched
society on Earth.
It is that, for the companies that operate them, not to mention the
thousands of supermarkets, hospitals, universities, businesses,
charitable trusts and local authorities up and down the country that
hand out the contracts, Big Brother has become a very big earner.
One needs only to read the glowing company testimonies on CP Plus's
website to realise how huge the multi-million-
has become.
For example, since Moto stopped managing its own car parks and brought
in the Hertfordshire specialist - with its all-seeing cameras - its
parking revenues have increased by 60 per cent and continue to rise year
on year.
But they are by no means the only company to cash in. Safeway, another
satisfied CP Plus client, reckons that each big supermarket branch could
make up to £500,000 a year just by using CCTV to snap sneaky shoppers
who use its car parks while buying their goods elsewhere.
Others to profit include Tesco, Morrisons, IKEA, service station
operators Welcome Break and Roadchef, not to mention hundreds of NHS
trusts that are keen to play up the importance of safe, video-monitored
car parks to patients, visitors and medical staff, but altogether more
coy when it comes to revealing the vast revenues they make from them.
As Charles Farrier, of the anti-electronic surveillance pressure group
No CCTV, points out: 'This is now a massive industry, and if anyone asks
why that is the case, when all the evidence proves it to be so
ineffective, I think the hidden profits that it makes are a big
contributing factor.'
There are two other main reasons why spy cameras continue to be
installed, he adds. First, they are very visible - and people like to be
seen to be doing something, even if it doesn't work. Second, we live in
an increasingly prying state, and it wants to know all about you, by any
available means.
This probably explains why British taxpayers have paid £500 million for
electronic surveillance during the past decade.
That is three-quarters of the Home Office's entire crime prevention
budget - an amount that could be more effectively spent on better street
lighting and other low-tech crime prevention methods such as
neighbourhood patrols, the new report says.
And it almost certainly explains why we weary travellers will continue
to be filmed, and summarily fined, if we commit the heinous crime of
oversleeping in a service station car park. Big Brother will keep on
watching us, we can be sure, even while we snore.
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