Driven To Destruction

What is it about unmanned speed cameras that infuriates some fast-driving Europeans? Willem Laurens, an unemployed bodyguard, is accused of leading a gang that has torched 26 cameras in Flanders. "People don't like the Big Brother mentality," explains senator Jean-Marie Dedecker, a Flemish conservative. And not just in Belgium. Some 30 cameras are attacked every year in the Netherlands. In the U.K., Motorists Against Detection says it's destroyed hundreds.

The mother of such crusades is the Tuf-tuf Club. Harald Kolijn, 33, from Helmond in the southern Netherlands, started it as a joke in...