Hmmm
I am growing weary of drivers telling me they are all so much better than me.
I know that I make mistakes when driving. I don't always pay full attention, I sometimes drive when I am tired, angry, sick and all those other things that perfect drivers don't do.
I find it next to impossible to know exactly how fast I am going. I can't do the math, well I could but I can't be bothered, but I think my car can change speed by 5 mph in about 0.5s if I try at all hard. Literally, blink and you miss 2 mph.
Car speedos can, and often do, over indicate by about 5 mph.
In reality few people can judge speed really accurately. A wide vista makes the speed seem less, a narrow gap will seem faster.
Speed cameras, and the police make allowances and the speedos indicate high. Anyone caught by a 30 mph camera probably had an indicated 35+. OK, sweeping generalisation, but there is a bit of a gap between creeping above the limit and getting a ticket.
So far, so reasonable.
The damage to the image of cameras was really done for me by the change to the rules for setting speed limits. Traditionally speed limits were set by the 85% rule ( Google it ) and this meant the limits were generally reasonable. Now the limits can be set artificially low for political reasons, which goes some way to explain why drivers are abruptly slowing for cameras. They are driving at the "natural" speed for the road, which is probably no more dangerous than the 40 mph that has been artificially imposed.
As for those who think they can safely exceed the limits. I presume they never drive when they are tired, angry, sick or whatever and don't make mistakes.
Which, finally, brings me to my point about the drivers who say they never break the limits, have never had a ticket and have never had an accident.
A typical driver, like me, will (probably) make hundreds of mistakes before a combination of circumstances leads to an actual accident. The distribution of these mistakes will be nearly random and individual accidents impossible to predict. The location of a speed camera may, or may not, make a difference.
Whether a driver has an accident contains a large element of chance. When another driver pulled out of a junction directly in front of me and then stopped across both lanes the only reason I didn't hit him was that the road was dry. A rain shower would have left me stuck under a 4x4.
I think of myself as a mediocre driver yet have 30+ years driving/riding ( cars, bikes, cycles), 1m+ km, no points, no convictions, no claims. Better to be lucky than clever.