Cumbria Safety Cameras was launched in April 2003 with the challenge to reduce killed and serious injury accidents by 40 per cent by 2010.   CSC is the operating arm of the Cumbria Safety Camera Partnership which comprises Cumbria County Council, Cumbria Constabulary, The Highways Agency and Her Majesty's Courts Service.

Safety camera vans monitor approximately 50 core mobile sites and there are a further six sites covered by static cameras.   All sites have a proven history of killed or serious injury accidents combined with a record of high speed and have to be submitted to - and approved by - the Department for Transport. The sites account for under one per cent of the road network within the county and the sole purpose of monitoring the sites is the reduce vehicle speed and collisions.

In accordance with guidelines from the Department for Transport, the schedules of when and where the vans are operating are distributed to the media for publication.  

Statistics are gathered by the data analyst, working with the Traffic Management Officers, from a variety of sources including road traffic surveys, and killed and serious injury records before being collated into a master database.   This shows where there are instances of high speeds on the county's roads, what class of vehicles are speeding and the key times.   KSI data is analysed to monitor not only where collisions have happened but to ascertain if certain areas on the road network are showing an upwards trend which needs to be tackled.

Partnership working is central to the CSC ethos.   Data is analysed and shared between partners, recommendations proposed and solutions implemented.   Information on speeding vehicles is handed to the police whose traffic division can use the data for intelligence led enforcement.   Trends in collisions are passed on to the highways partners to see if an engineering solution has required.  

Educational campaigns are designed to jigsaw into those run by partners. CSC's Don't Crunch After Lunch leaflets are distributed at BikeSafe educational sessions run by the police; the Got A Car 2 Die for young driver leaflets are distributed by the Fire and Rescue Services at its Road Awareness days in secondary schools; a campaign targeting professional drivers, including HGV operators, was distributed by the Freight Transport Association among its members. 

CSC managers sit on all CRASH groups, sub-committees and   executive meetings and a safety camera van attends events organised by other partners as well as county agricultural days to interact with the public.