Swindon Borough Council switched on a set of ANPR cameras this week outside schools on Okus Road, Akers Way, Grange Drive, Croft Road and Homington Avenue, five months after they were quietly bolted to lampposts in June and then left to stare at traffic in silence. The devices can now pass vehicle speed data to Wiltshire Police, who will issue warning letters and fines to anyone caught breaking the limit.

Reaction has been mixed. Several residents have asked for more cameras on other roads, while others say the existing speed limit signs are perfectly legible and nobody needs a box on a pole to confirm it. A Stratton St Margaret councillor has also questioned the exact spot chosen on Grange Drive, noting it sits near a zebra crossing and parade of shops where parked cars already force traffic to slow down, rather than further along the straight stretch where speeding is reportedly more of a problem.

Which means the camera's chief achievement so far has been photographing drivers at the one point on Grange Drive where nobody was going to speed anyway. Motorists have been dutifully crawling past the zebra crossing at roughly the pace of a man carrying a full tea tray, and the camera has been dutifully recording this as a triumph of road safety policy.

Council officers have described the scheme as a pilot that will build a clearer picture of traffic patterns, and have stressed that no decision has yet been made on relocating any of the cameras. It is understood the clearer picture currently consists mainly of well behaved parked cars and one zebra crossing that has never broken a speed limit in its life.

Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had used that sort of crossing for fifty years without a single flashing light telling her she was going too fast, on account of being seventy two and carrying shopping. 'I'm not one to gossip, but the Pritchards two doors down reverse off their drive like they're being chased, and that camera's pointing the wrong way to catch them.'

Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the trial had given him a new way of describing the firm's delivery schedule, which technically allows forty minutes for a drop that takes twelve, so that Dave from Despatch always arrives looking admirably unhurried. He added that true road safety was really about mindset, a phrase he intended to put on a banner for the warehouse, just as soon as Julie had finished using the laminator for something urgent.

For now the cameras remain active, dutifully gathering evidence that, on at least one stretch of Grange Drive, the traffic was never the problem.