Accidents at a Hinchley Wood junction have more than doubled in the past three years, despite a red light camera being installed to prevent them.

In total, there were 11 accidents on the A307 Kingston bypass between October 2005 and September 2008, up from five in the three years before the camera was installed.

Of the 11 accidents, two were serious, with a pedestrian being hit by a speeding car and two cars colliding when a car turned right.

The camera, at the junction of Manor Road, flashes when a driver skips a red light but does not always issue a ticket.

The increase in accidents has been put down to speeding and dangerous right turns at the junction.

Surrey Safety Camera Partnership hopes to install a dual purpose camera, which would detect both red light violations and speeding, providing it can get the extra funding.

Elsewhere in the borough, the static camera on the A3 at Hook cut the number of collisions from 11 in the three years before the camera, to six in the past three years.

A mobile camera on the A244 at Copsem Lane reduced the number of collisions from 15 before the camera to 12 in the three years afterwards.

Speed cameras in Surrey raised £1.84m in fines in the past financial year, equating to two fines per camera, per day. The partnership will not reveal how much each camera raised in case it reveals which ones are dummies. Of the 26 static speed cameras in Surrey, only six of them have film in at any one time, and these are rotated. Across the country, the proportion of “live” cameras varies from less than one-in-10 to about 60 per cent.

Project manager Duncan Knox said: “If every single one had a live camera in, we wouldn’t be able to cope with the number of offences generated in the office here.” He said the camera’s “dummy flash” provides enough of a deterrent to prevent people speeding.

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