Safe Speed Forums

But where is the evidence? Injury crashes were almost 25% higher in the era of TrafPol.

I would suggest that going back to _entirely_ TrafPol will increase the incidence of reckless and aggressive driving as it'd be easier to get away with. A speed camera is always there, a Traffic Policeman can not be.

We need a combination of both. More Traffic Police patrolling the heavily used routes, and safety cameras (preferably SPECS to remove the stop/start effect) on roads which have a lower frequency of traffic or are difficult/impractical to patrol (most rural roads) coupled with speed limits set at the median speed for the roads in question.

No. Wildly wrong.

Safe Speed believes that driver quality is right at the centre of road safety. Proper policies that address driver quality issues will strongly address driver quality shortfalls like tailgating.

Tailgating is a prime candidate for the 'public information' campaigns that we wish to see.

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

Injury crashes aren't a very good measure for trend purposes because of problems with rates of reporting. However, roads fatalities were higher, but falling fast in the pre camera era. As I'm sure you know.

The factors that gave us the big falls are still present (vehicle engineering improvements, roads improvements, post crash care improvements) but we are not getting the big falls any more.

I said in 2002 that that was because 'drivers were getting worse'. Last year TRL said it was because 'drivers were getting worse'.

Do you think drivers might be getting worse then?



And that's exactly the sort of rubbish thinking that's damaging driver quality.

I think it's high time you declared your vested interest.

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

I'm not entirely sure where you're going, but around 60% are speeding at sample sites on most road types, while only 5% of crashes involve any vehicle exceeding a speed limit. This shows that speeding is 'underrepresented' in the crash stats by about 10:1.

The 'obvious' conclusion is that speeding is far safer than not speeding, but the truth is that speeding and crashes tend to take place in different times and places. This is fairly obvious when you think about it...

Drivers slow down where there are hazards and the risk of crashing is high and speed up where there are few hazards and the risk of crashing is low. Which is exactly what we need them to do.

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

Have your local SCP had a recent leafleting raid in your area? This is exactly the sort of stuff THEY habitually come out with!

OK, let's just for the minute, as you suggest, conveniently IGNORE the "K" statistics shall we? After all, that's what my local SCP does - having just seen a substantial INCREASE in "K"s after nearly 4 years of their activities.

It best suits the purpose of anyone trying to defend the SCPs' lamentable record to consider "K"s and "SIs" together. For a start, there will always be far more "SI"s than "Ks". That will help mask the number of deaths quite nicely. Having done that, the next thing to do would be to make sure that whatever you did, you did NOT allow properly qualified medical personnel to have anything to do with the "SI" statistics!

I've often wondered why, after all it's spouting about "joined-up-government" that this government doesn't use the hospital casualty departments' own figures for "SI"s. These already exist and have done so for years. My wife works in a hospital. On arrival at any casualty department, a road traffic accident victim is "trauma-scored". The scoring system is well established and internationally recognised. It is carried out by medics in the hospital with all the necessary diagnostic equipment at their fingertips. So what do the SCPs do? They completely ignore it and ask the police attending the scene to do it instead.

They then have some bizarre system of classifying a "serious" injury that I've never quite been able to fathom. It seems to involve whether or not any bones have been broken (like you can always tell at the scene of the accident with your police-issue X-ray eyes!) and whether or not an overnight stay in hospital is required. Now I don’t know about your local hospital but my wife’s is certainly under immense pressure to “process” patients (sorry, I think we now have to call them “clients” or something daft!) faster and faster. Reduce the number that are kept in overnight for “observation” and “BINGO!”, without actually doing a thing to improve road safety, the SCPs’ figures start to improve!

It was this more than any other single factor that started me questioning the whole idea of camera-enforcement. I couldn't understand why "SI"s improved and "K"s didn't. I expect you’ve probably seen or heard tell of the recent (last summer) article in the British Medical Journal on precisely this topic? It was exactly what I’m on about. Someone looked at the “SI” figures for road traffic accidents over the period that cameras have been about and found that if you use the hospital figures, the number hasn’t really changed at all (bit like the “K”s really)!

Finally, I can’t quite see how one minute, you can be talking about the general calming influence that cameras have on traffic speed and the next, you say “preferably SPECS” to get rid of the speeding-up effect that happens immediately after a fixed camera? That sounds like wanting to have your cake and eat it if you’ll forgive me!

Basically Paul, I think what I was getting at in the wee hours was that at a study site where the proportion of accidents attributed to exceeding the speed limit was higher, we would expect to see an 85%ile speed that was also in excess of the speed limit, and if you were, for analysis purposes, to take the speed limit as the 85%ile speed and reexamine the figures, you would probably find an accident rate attributable to exceeding the speed limit similar to that of other study sites.

It's a way of showing, with DfT's own figures, that reducing speed limits does nothing to cure the overall accident rate, though it does allow the figures to be skewed to 'prove' that 'Speed Kills', since they can say 'look what a high proportion of accidents involved exceeding the speed limit'. Hardly surprising if the speed limit is 20mph on a dual carriageway!

I would hypothesise further that, when held against the 85%ile speed, we would see no reduction in the proportion of accidents attributable to 'excessive' speed in sites where speed cameras are installed. This would argue for the effectiveness of the 85%ile rule for setting limits, and against the effectiveness of speed cameras to do anything useful for road safety.

About Parrot's dual carriageway; I would suppose that its a major commuting route? I guess this from the 'average weekday flows' quoted of 'below 50mph', and would presume that travelling any faster at times when the majority of users are on the roads is impossible due to congestion. They should really take the 85%ile of 'free-flowing' traffic for it to be representative of anything!

Paul Bentley also goes on to say that 66% of drivers travel below 50; so the new limit would criminalise 19%, effectively one in five, of the drivers who's presumed safe driving practice was the basis for setting the speed limit!! By the guidelines he quotes the limit could equally well have been 60, which would avoid criminalising these 'safe' drivers, avoid ambiguity by conforming with NSL policy for dual carriageways, but sadly deny the scameraships the chance to gouge 44% of motorists travelling the route!

Anyone else incensed by the devious use of the 'guidelines' to fleece drivers?

Why would one slow down when not exceeding the limit? I believe the type of people who panic brake for cameras when not exceeding the limit are the type who should be getting pulled over by Trafpol - they'll likely never be caught by a speed camera, but they're clearly driving with blinkers.



I think you're thinking 'loss of control' when related to high speed crashes. Loss of control can happen at almost any speed. You can lose control when aquaplaning through a previously unseen puddle well within the speed limit. You can lose control entering, exiting, or being on a roundabout when the surface is slippery, but still well within the speed limit - at speeds of as little as 20mph. 20mph is all it takes to hit a motorcyclist or cyclist and kill them. A speed camera or even the consideration that they're around wouldn't make a jot of difference to that kind of accident. You can lose control when braking in a straight line across a cobbled surface, or when you hit a deep pot hole, or black ice. None of these things necessarily have anything to do with breaking the limit, or even excess speed for the conditions (without the benefit of hindsight).



I agree that in general, motorists should not expect to be driving around a housing estate and avoiding somebody doing 50mph. However, when using the roads, do you rely on this knowledge and drive without thinking, or do you use your own judgement to avoid an incident? I would suggest the vast majority of road users do the latter. They may quite rightly complain about speeding motorists in this instance, and I'd probably join with them. But there are still people who blithely pull out into oncoming traffic without making any effort to guage the speed and distance of the oncoming traffic - again, this is bad driving and needs addressing much more so than the behaviour of the speeding motorist.



Think how many cameras you would need? And how would a camera stop the behaviour? Trafpol would be able to pull them over immediately. I'm amazed that you've suggested this.

If you found a suitable study site - and they are rare - then I expect you would find some particular local 'problem' too. An example might be a deceptive bend. The problems are:

- Crashes are rare and generally no longer focussed in localities. (We have successfully treated most of the 'old-style' black spots.)

- Crashes are far more common where hazard densities are high and speeds are low.

- Speeding is far more common where hazard densities are low, and crashes are rare.

- If 10,000 drivers manage the deceptive bend, and one boy racer crashes, then the speed of the 10,000 tells you absolutely nothing about the crash - although government like to pretend that it does.

All in all - if I understand your point properly - there's nowhere to go with the idea.

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

Fair enough, was only the seed of an idea

Keep 'em coming. It's always good to explore these things. I've already had an excellent spin off because I'd never expressed the following as clearly before:

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

The highway code is ..... good in parts.
It seems to be written by people who don't get out much.

It is a set of very simple guidelines; and could not possibly include the things you mention. My beef with it is that not all the guidelines are sensible.

There are a lot of ways that it could include the things I've mentioned, although not in an 'in depth' way.

I'd suggest it needs a forward that talks about skills, attitudes and responsibilities and explains the huge value of learning from experience.

You're right that it can't 'do the job' but it sure could 'set the scene'.

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

IG did mention the books to read alongside it - and there are his COAST posts, Hendon and Cycling Notes in the archives of the forum.

I think the "Essential Skills" book is perhaps the best one for new drivers as it covers much good practice and explains how to start looking beyond the Highway Code and into the reality of being out there on the road. I would also suggest the Hazard Aware DVD and What If? DVD are also useful training tools to focus the mind as to potential hazards. Not perfect as the programme is geared to a certain timing on the mouse click and fails you for spotting it early as it "thinks you are manipulating". Wildy tells me one of the PH BiB once posted he found this to be a drawback when they as Trafpol trialled these tests. Experience wil see it develop and these are geared to learners. However, as a training tool - our kids found it of use to them.

Family decided that person driving on the DVD was a right muppet though

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My kids had a copy of the Hazard Aware DVD - which I failed miserably until I started to use it as a computer game.

It fails you if you spot more than one hazard and also if you spot them too early - the exact opposite of how your mind should work. Hazards never come one at a time! And the sooner you see them, the better!
It's a great idea but very difficult to be realistic.

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I heard a chap on the radio a while back, he was the chairman of the British Association of Driving Instructors (or whatever the correct name for the organisation is) and he was complaining that the Hazard Perception test was more akin to an arcade game than real life. He also "complained" that he consistently failed it, whereas his wife, a non-driver, passed it every time!

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

And neither does driving within the speed limit guarantee safety.
Would you agree?

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I would agree, so why drive faster than it?

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... 232#118232

Why not?

Your point is?

The limit is 50, so why do 70?

The limit was 70 before, so you probably did 80 or 90.

I would exceed the limit because

a: I wanted to get there faster

b: I wouldn't consider it an issue, I'd just drive at a natural pace for me, the car and the conditions.