And yet, when I was the victim of a hit and run incident in central London we were unable to locate a single working camera that could provide any usable evidence.

The vast majority either do not work, or are privately owned and when enquired about (difficult in itself as there are so many parties to contact once the owner is identified, and they likely do not have direct access and need to speak to someone else) have extremely useless retention periods that meant no footage survived enough time to request it.