Safe Speed Forums

Hi all,

Firstly this is not me being pro-camera when I put this to all of you out there, in-fact I think cameras can safely removed from the equation as totally irrelevant so as to speak (as usual).

Given that road capacity has not really increased (if at all) in the last ten years, so therefore not being a real variable in the equation, and car use has increased and road deaths were falling until say 10 years ago then isn't there a point (mathematical) where the road deaths will not go on dropping because there will never be a point reached where no people are KSI on the roads even with 10 drivers there will be an injury/death at some point. Then again I would say that the UK average speed has been falling due to the lack of road building thus congestion increasing.

But on thinking about this, speed cameras maybe have reduced the overall speeds elswhere but as we are seeing having no real effect on death rates.

So to summarise

Road deaths have been pretty stable in the last 10 years

Road building has ceased in the last ten years

the rise in car use has still increased

Overall speeds have reduced

So is it not the case that road building thus alleviating congestion would be a much better route to reducing road deaths?

Not got any hard facts here but just a thought. Would be interesting to hear other comments but don't slag me if I missed something

Andrew

You have raised an interesting point that I do not recall seeing elsewhere in the forum, although being fairly new it is probably there somewhere.

If road building has ceased for 10 years and traffic has increased, how can anyone say that the speed cameras have caused an overall reduction in average speeds. Surely the additional conjestion is more likely to reduce average speed than cameras are and cameras only reduce speed locally, not overall.

I'm sure cameras have had some effect but I do not believe anyone has the right to claim that they are the sole or even the major reason for a reduction.

And even if they have, so what. They are still causing more crashes than they are stopping as can be clearly seen in the statistics put forward on SpeedSafe....

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Ross

Yes I'm a hoon, but only on the track!!!!

This suggests there isn't really a correlation between average speed and casualty levels.

Also official surveys show that in free-flowing conditions away from camera sites there's no reduction in average speeds.

It's very difficult to find any single "panacea" indicator.

IMV the growth in the number of unlicensed drivers (caused by reduction in trafpol and rise of automated enforcement) must be a major factor.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

We do need to consider the possibility that a reduction in road building has contributed to the "fatality gap".

I don't believe that it has for a series of reasons, none of which are proof.

1) A recent report shows that an increase in congestion normally leads to fewer crashes. (I'll dig out the reference.)
2) Traffic has continued to transfer to "safer roads". See the figures and the spreadsheet on http://www.safespeed.org.uk/which.html
3) We have an excellent alternative explanation that appears to fit all the known facts. See the last section (i.e. the appendix) on: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/stone.html

We could use the figures in 2) above and cmpare the safety trends on different road types. We do know that minor urban roads continue to be built as towns are expanded. Perhaps we could look for any correlation between trend failures by road type and expansion reduction by road type?

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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