One out of every two car owners in England and Wales received either a traffic or parking ticket in 2004 according to UK Home Office statistics released today. More than 11.1 million parking tickets were issued by police and local authorities in addition to 2,038,400 million speed and red light camera tickets distributed among the country's 29 million automobiles. Photo tickets alone generated £122 million (US $213 million) in revenue. Police issued a mere 59,000 written warnings.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign, charges the Home Office with manipulating the numbers to promote an even harsher regime against motorists. The government's report claims that careless driving is up 60 percent, without noting that the figure is inflated by counting the imaginary offense of "failing to identify the driver" as careless. The latter crime was created to force car owners either to incriminate themselves or their spouses.

"These new statistics do not suggest that we are doing anything to improve road safety," said Smith. "They show that we're hitting easy and ineffective targets, rather than taking the trouble to identify those causing a danger to others."

The full report is available at the source link below in a 443k PDF file.