http://www.tamworthherald.co.uk/display ... K=11596890
FURY AT ATTACK ON SPEED CAMERA MAN
10:30 - 06 January 2005
The letter from Steve Hounsham, of 'anti-car' Transport 2000, (Herald, December 23) was misleading.
There is no 'proof' that speed cameras or 20mph speed limits save lives. The evidence supporting Mr Hounsham's view relies on ignoring the long established statistical principal of 'regression to the mean' or 'bias selection', which allows for the natural fluctuations in the numbers of accidents on our roads in the absence of control sites.
If only half of the fixed and mobile speed cameras on UK roads saved just one life per year, road fatalities would be virtually eliminated.
In reality, fatalities are rising rather than falling, and there is evidence that casualties have actually increased at many camera sites.
The letter also attacked Paul Smith of SafeSpeed. It said he is a 'one-man campaign' but he is not. SafeSpeed has a fee-paying membership, which includes myself. I have chosen to help fund his work, but nobody voted for the Government to fund the un-elected bureaucrats of Transport 2000 out of our taxes, in order to promote the bus and rail industries.
Mr Smith is a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists so I feel that his road safety credentials should not be questioned by those who have failed to declare their own.
Long may Paul Smith continue his work to expose the failure of a 'speed only matters' road safety policy that has resulted in falling numbers of traffic police officers and rising numbers of fatalities on our roads.
The fact that Transport 2000 deems it necessary to attempt a character assassination of Mr Smith must be seen as a measure of his success.
Paul Biggs, Association of British Drivers (ABD), Staffordshire Co-ordinator and member of SafeSpeed (Vva email).
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ATTACKING SafeSpeed's Paul Smith, Transport 2000's Steve Hounsham's letter to the Herald was carefully constructed but simplistic and misleading.
Transport 2000 is a pressure group, extremely well funded by the Public Transport Industry.
Their main sport is to bash private driving.
No doubt Transport 2000 is still smarting from Paul Smith's successful Radio 4 trial and expos?? of Transport 2000.
Staffordshire - by far the county with the most traffic calming and speed cameras in the whole of the UK - had a 26 per cent INCREASE in deaths last year!
Slower speeds and speed cameras do NOT save lives; traffic calming does NOT addressing real road safety issues.
Some people are not safe at any speed!
There is simply no space to argue figures and statistics in a letter to a newspaper - one reason why Transport 2000's absurd propaganda sticks.
But I do recommend SafeSpeed's website (
www.safespeed.org.uk) for a scientific, referenced, detailed and meticulously argued refutation of Transport 2000's dangerous, pressure group activities.
But what really angers me about Mr Hounsham's letter is his reliance on children's 'views' on road safety. Humbug!
Is that before or after their young minds have been fed his organisation's propaganda?
Or after have been carefully taught that humps and speed cameras do indeed 'saves lives'?
Of course children will have those views - that is what they are taught to believe. And as they get older they'll perhaps fall on web sites like safespeed.org.uk and suddenly realise they've been conned!
Paul Biggs in another letter to the Herald (December 23) told the truth. He said parents driving children to school in the safe, supervised car environment was the real reason child deaths have fallen dramatically in recent years.
Care, commonsense and courtesy - by everybody - children included - saves lives.
Cllr Chris Cooke, Tamworth (Via email)