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safety first?
speed cameras pop up on phetkasem
•Motorists • entering Hua Hin from either the north or the south on Phetkasem Road may have noticed hua hin
that Hua Hin is now the proud owner of two sets of speed cameras. The installations were completed in the last couple of weeks, and have been operational for about a week now, although it is not clear as yet if they are just warnings for drivers to slow down, or if they are set up to issue fines with accompanying photos as proof. If speeding fines are going to be issued, these are posted to the address the vehicle is registered at, and if they are not paid within a certain time period, the fine is effectively doubled; if they are not paid by the time the next road tax is paid, the fine will be added on to that bill, so there is no escaping paying. We suspect that, at least initially, these new installations won’t be resulting in fines, but will do in the very near future after a short testing phase. The northern speed cameras are in a particularly tricky position as at that point on Phetkasem Road it is a three lane highway and vehicles would have been travelling at or close to the national speed limit not much before it, so to drop to fifty kph is not that easy, although it is understandable due to the proximity to a u-turn; however that speed is not very helpful in terms of efficient running of an engine, and the sudden drop could actually cause more accidents than it prevents. The authorities are clearly trying to address the issue of safety on the roads in Hua Hin, but we are not convinced these latest additions will do that; given the location of them, it seems that the problem would more likely be improved by eliminating u-turns and introducing an alternative way for people to make turns; the obvious candidates for that would be traffic lights or roundabouts, as both are designed to prevent drivers having to turn across the fast lane.