Safe Speed Forums

One of the more effective ways to deter ill thought out speed management policy from councils and the like is to ask for proof around their policies.

e.g.

How many people were killed by a speeding motorist who was properly insured, licensed, taxed and motd, not over the limit etc?

Or please provide accident data for road xyz for 3 years before the new lower limit and data since etc..

From the 1st of Jan we will have powers to request any information we like and the authorities are bound to supply within 20 days. Councils up and down the contry are pulling their hair out as they know they will struggle to meet the requirements.

you can find more about your rights here http://www.foi-uk.org/ But basically if you ask it and the reason is genuine research - they have to provide it as long as it takes them less than (approx 2 days work) and they don't have 100s of people asking for the same thing.

I've already tested my rights by mentioning the act and got an extremely detailed personal response (where previously a standard letter would have been produced).

It's my advice to claim your rights whenever you request information.

More like the containment of information act.

If you read the Cambs scammers statement, it details how they will prevent information getting into the public domain, not release it.

Anyone got any ideas how to get something interesting out of them?

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Troll baiter extraordinaire

I sent Cumbria SCP a list of six questions. Of those six, they denied me an answer to three. All, IMO, were perfectly valid questions to a safety camera partnership and were as follows:

Q1. What percentage of accidents in the CSCP area are caused by drivers exceeding the posted speed limit? DENIED

Q2. How many miles of road are there in the Cumbria SCP area (referably broken down into categories - motorway, A-class, others)? DENIED

Q3. What are the recorded 85-percentile speed(s) for the M6 site(s)?

Q4/Q5. What were the average speed(s) at the M6 site(s) before CSCP began operations, and what is the average speed today?

Q6. What percentage of NIPs result in a successful prosecution (either by way of a paid FPN, or a guilty verdict at a court hearing)? DENIED

So yeah, you could say they're not exactly as free with their data as this act would imply they should be...

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Carl Prescott

What information would be useful to have? I was thinking about a particular stretch of road in Cambridgeshire as it has two cameras and I can work out when each was installed (Gets round the single site exclusion).

I thought about requesting KSI by year, broken down into K Vs SI prior to the introduction of cameras and since.

Perhaps it's worth a bit of brainstorming to find out the best question and then ask it of different scameraships so we can get a little closer to the truth?

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Troll baiter extraordinaire

Tis indeed a sick joke ... spinned of course...

I have heard that the FOI is included as a debate topic on Vin'e BBC Radio 2 Prog this lunchtime - lot of criticism about it as there is reluctance to publish, make available or inform the public of the publication titles.

How on earth can one ask for something if they have not idea what the published document is called!

Typical!

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Q2. How many miles of road are there in the Cumbria SCP area (referably broken down into categories - motorway, A-class, others)? DENIED

Q6. What percentage of NIPs result in a successful prosecution (either by way of a paid FPN, or a guilty verdict at a court hearing)? [b]DENIED[/b


Why can't they answer Q2 - not a state secret is it??

Q6 - just checked the 2005/6 Scam manual - section 10.5 Financial Performance (page 55) - they are required to monitor, amongst others, the conversion rate of NIP's issued to FPN's issued and the Payment rate of FPN's issued. So they MUST have this information! We can only speculate why they won't share it with us....

Actually, we don't need to speculate - they have to give reasons for not supplying information. Here's the original PDF response to my request:

http://www.prescott.eclipse.co.uk/other ... report.pdf

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Carl Prescott

Thanks for that Carl, there are some gems in there!

Look at those 85th percentile figures - 90 mph speed limit seems appropriate...

Q6 response is a classic. What a bizarre answer. How come they think publishing the number of people caught at a location will lower the "deterrent effectiveness" of the site? In future, all signs like PeterE's logo should be banned??

What utter rubbish. Most drivers on seeing a sign saying "xxx drivers caught..." would slow down (regardless of what speed they were doing in the first place...). I think this shows their prime concern is the effectiveness of the site in raising revenue...

Noted also they think likewise about disclosing threshold speeds. I thought ACPO's guideline thresholds were well publicised - does CSCP have something to hide here??

The FOI does allow for them to refuse to answer questions where the answers are available elsewhere. This is a bit unfortunate because they don't need to tell you *where* - it could be published in some document with a tiny print run and they would need to know *which* document to be able to tell you that.

For general FOI information I would recommend SpyBlogs' FOIA blog:

http://www.spy.org.uk/foia/

I sent them a link to the DVLA's 0870 disclosure, it is a very minor piece of information but significant because the posts in the thread show that the DVLA managers were *adament* that the Swansea local number would never be disclosed. If I was the complainant I would send an email back with the number and just "Na-na-na-na-na!"

Gareth

Hello. I'm new here!

Just been doing some searching about speed cameras on the internet over the last few days and I found the site - very impressive! Keep up the good work people!

I am making some requests of information from these "partnerships" that run speed cameras ... and have got some replies saying that just my name and email address isn't enough to give me the information. Do I legally have to tell them where I live? Surely my email address is enough so that they can send the information back.

Would be interesting to see if anyone has any knowledge of what info YOU have to give them in return for THEM giving it to us!

Jonny