Safe Speed Forums

Saw this interesting stat today:


http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,, ... 65,00.html

Coupled with the fact that the casualty rate has stopped falling significantly over the last 5 years, this has interesting implications for Mr Parrot’s graph “deaths, per billion KM”, the one that conveniently ends at 2000 (his other graphs end at 2002):



His ‘residuals’ would show quite a sharp trend past 2000.....

Another interesting link:

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/articl ... 89,00.html


I can’t find the study but I have seen data showing this trend elsewhere (Mike, yes I already knew the answer to my question of international trends)


Someone else who isn’t very good with stats:

No! The percentage shows a ratiometric fall, hence it negates the need to show an absolute level. All else being equal, I would expect a successful policy to yield a year on year (time span is irrelevant) fall of equal ratios.

And why compare against just France?

Can you just clarify the following –

What is it that Safe Speed seeks to do?

What evidence is there that the cameras cause accidents by making people break?

One of the issues I can’t seem to get round is that many people have said (over in the anti-pcso thread) that they feel there should be more Traffic Cops and less speed cameras.

But had there been more Traffic Cops, many more people will have been stopped by one and given a ticket and a telling off. On top of that I should imagine many people driving along would also break when they see a Traffic Cop pulling out up ahead or waiting in a lay-by.

It just seems as though people would prefer getting a speeding ticket and 3 points from a copper (who could have had a very bad day) than a machine which is indiscriminate.

I’ve spent the last day or so, searching through the Police officer bloggs to see what they think and there all for them, they cant be everywhere all of the time and seem to agree that they should be placed in danger hotspots that have documented high numbers of accidents.

We can have a thousand graphs and statistics when we consider possibilities and trends and more cars or less cars, more miles, less/more two/three/four car families, more high performance cars with higher cc’s, more younger drivers, less older drivers, cheaper car insurance so people can have faster cars, high performance cars being fashionable and easily assessable through finance etc etc etc etc etc.
There is just too many things to take in to consideration to say “yes it is saving lives, no it’s certainly not saving lives”

What we need to do is look at what the people who deal with road traffic accidents every day and see what they all think.
Traffic Officers.

They seem to be for them.

just think of a basic situation. You turn a corner, the roads clear, you accelerate.... ooh bugger I'm doing 35mph... better slow down. No problem, nobody harmed. The policeman behind you watches this behaviour. S/He can see there's no danger (and has also run your plates to see that your 'papers' are in order) and no further action is taken.
Meanwhile the lowlife hiding in a van hidden behind the bushes up the road has videotaped you 'speeding' for .2s and your £60/3 point letter is in the post.
We pass the lowlife in the van and a little further down the road there's a queue of traffic
(and this next bit I'm not making up - I actually saw this last week). Some fool in his mondeo doesn't want to wait an extra few seconds in the queue so he mounts the footpath and drives 30m fully ON THE FOOTPATH to the next junction. This is a junction where there are often people walking around. Fortunately this time they were on the opposite side. Had plod been behind me rather than a gatso we may have had one less idiot on the road (or is that footpath?).

Trying to reverse the road safety trend and make the roads safer.
[url=http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22749-2440389,00.html
]some good reasons here[/url]

Britain lies with Slovakia and Poland near the bottom of the table of European Union states, compiled by the European Transport Safety Council, a Brussels-based campaign group. "---
If that aint a good reason to question the present policy -WHAT IS ??

"


Or rather , if a Football side started losing games , first the strategy ,then the manager would be suspect.

I think the point that safespeed is making is that road safety is a complex issue far beyond the reach of the current single minded over-use of the speed camera.

Lets have a look at some empirical evidence showing that driver psychology, rather than speed causes accidents:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9my6KPZRIo

If driver psychology is a strong determinator of accidents and injuries, then in order to reduce them, more time and effort needs to be in place for a holistic approach, including psychological countermeasures, rather than a singleminded approach, which is the reduction of speed.

It is quite clear to me that a badly designed road is going to remain badly designed wether a speed camera is in place or not. Imagine for example (Fig1.) a single lane T junction where the adjoining road has no visibility to the left or right.

single lane
=========> Fig1. T-Junction.
WALL¦¦WALL

A speed camera at the junction would have no function. Removing the wall would.

The over-use of speed-cameras can legitimately be viewed as a money-grabbing tool by governments in order to raise taxation, for example: restrict a small section of normally fast motorway to 50mph for no good reason, and place a a load of camera's across it.

Are Traffic Officers for them? I do not know. But their opinions could be biased - are they allowed to speak out of turn? Would they risk their jobs?
Would they loose a chance of promotion? Do they gain by towing the party line? What information is made available to them, and where does it come from? They are after all, employed by the Government who gain control by taxation.

Is it just me, or does this graph look a bit dodgy? The best fit line seems to fit very poorly for the last few years of the 1990s, with the last of the red diamonds seeming to trend well above the best fit line. If he included the 2000-2005 data, which IIRC shows only a very slight reduction in casualty rates, then his own graph would clearly show the trend that he claims it disproves?

Just look at the linear rising trend in the residuals since 1994.

Really, that's all we need to know. Large scale deviation from trend. We could argue for ever about exactly how big it is. But it's there. It's real. It's always there.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety