Don't you love companies with rivers of gold? Like speed and red light cameras. Well, like Redflex. Listed on the ASX till shareholders meet (virtually of course) on Monday at 9am and vote to give Arizona-based company Verra Mobility a virtual worldwide monopoly on catching motorists going through red lights and speeding and/or speeding through red lights.

Companies like Redflex and Verra don't like really telling you what they do. So Verra says: "We enable safer communities by installing, maintaining and managing leading technology solutions that positively impact driver behaviour, enhance road safety and optimise traffic mobility."

We would say: "We help greedy, rapacious governments who don't give a stuff about road safety insert their grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, wizened claws deep into your bank account and extract your hard-earned cash."

So, in one state, NSW, Erin Lyons from our own Daily Telegraph tells us that in February the government took more than $6m in revenue from mobile speed camera fines, which was more than the $5,743,994 worth of fines handed out for the whole of last financial year. What a top effort! Here's how they did it. Step 1: Remove mobile speed camera warning signs. Step 2: Triple the number of hours that speed cameras operate — from 7000 to 20,000 hours each month.

In fact, this rort is so good that our mates at Redflex in South Melbourne boast about it to their investors. Like in December: "Redflex will supply fixed digital road safety cameras to the state for the West Gate tunnel project" and "further growth in recurring revenue expected in the second half this year as new programs in the US become fully operational and expansion of mobile speed deployments in NSW, Australia".

Washington not-for-profit blog TheNewspaper.com provides objective information about the politics of driving. Here's their take on the Verra Redlex takeover: "Redflex management would benefit greatly from approval of the deal. CEO Mark J. Talbot, for example, would enjoy a payout of $3.6m — though approval of the merger is far from guaranteed."

Here's the thing. Despite taking the stick approach and belting motorists with big fines, road deaths have stayed roughly the same for 10 years. And despite COVID, the road toll in 2020 was only a bit lower than in 2019.