@rip

Risks. Tradeoffs. The absence of perfect solutions in this life.

Your unsupported assertion was that speed does not kill. My example showed that it can be (and almost always is, one way or another) the dominant factor in accident survival. (Conservation of Momentum: Not just a good idea, it's the Law!) QED.

Now you want to change the underlying argument, but okay, I'll rise to the bait. Why not reduce speed limits universally and increase safety? Because a fully loaded tractor trailer traveling at 10 mph can take you right out of this life, given bad luck and bad timing. Risks. Tradeoffs. The absence of perfect solutions in this life. I want/need to go places -- and, unlike some, I'm aware that this negates the possibility of perfect safety. And I've gotten over it.

Why, you can't convict me of murder and theft just because a CCTV took pictures of me slitting the throats of little old ladies before I stole their pension checks! I have a *right* to be *confronted* by my *accuser* so he can be intimidated I mean cross-examined! And how dare it make any difference that *my* knife is covered with *my* fingerprints *and* the blood of each and all of the victims? Police state!

Colliding with a bridge abutment is the result of bad driving. Surviving the collision is the result of a sufficiently low speed of impact. Yes, speed *does* kill.

"[T]hese cameras exist solely to rack up fines and do little but take money from drivers who are often engaged in perfectly safe driving."
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As for the first point, I doubt it. Here in the States, even the crassest of politicos have learned to convince themselves they're acting in the public interest -- even when they manifestly aren't. Sure, it's a revenue generator...but it *is* in the public interest to reduce speeding, and to the extent that speeding *is* reduced, those revenues will decline. (How economically illiterate, though. Install a bunch of big bucks boxes, which will self-finance -- unless they actually reduce speeding, that is... Kinda like our high[er and higher] tobacco taxes: we want people to stop smoking, but how will we make up the shortfall if that revenue stream dries up?)

Can some drivers operate safely at higher-than-posted speeds? Of course. But rules of the road will always be set at a lower common denominator because the overwhelming majority of drivers are *not* extraordinarily competent -- nor would you like the results of a set of rules that falsely assumed they were.

Whereas those of us living in the US who *want* a hard drive in the box -- for time-shifting and *really easy* archiving of the shows we want to keep -- are equally put out because such machines are *nearly impossible* to find on this side of the Atlantic, even at a much higher premium than the one you quote.