Safe Speed Forums

Wiltshire camera partnership have released the following with regard to the M4 cameras:

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Embargoed until 00:01 Thursday 13th April


1000 hours 13th April to 0800 hours 10th April of each following year
WILTSHIRE M4 INJURY COLLISIONS
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Fatal 6 6 4 4 2
Serious Injury 8 17 18 19 7
Slight Injury 117 103 129 110 66
Total Injury Collisions 131 126 151 133 75

RE above Table
Safety camera enforcement on the Wiltshire stretch of the M4 commenced at 1000 hours on the 13th April 2005. The column on the extreme right relates to all injury collisions since enforcement began up to 0800 hours this morning. (10th April)

The figures in the previous columns relate to exactly the same period commencing on the 13th April of each year up to 10th April the following year.

The figure 2 for fatalities in the period commencing 2005 includes the recent death on the M4 near Swindon. To date the Coroners Inquest has not been held therefore we cannot officially know whether this is a road death or a suicide. For the time being this is being included as a road death however in the event of the Coroner finding this to be a suicide it will be removed from the table.

From the above table it will be seen that since enforcement began on the Wiltshire stretch of the M4 there has been a 44.55% reduction in injury collisions when compared to the average of the previous four years for the same period.

WILTSHIRE M4 CASUALTIES From 1200 hrs 13th April to 28th February for each year
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Fatal 4 7 4 3 2
Serious Injury 14 24 18 21 8
Slight Injury 192 178 261 165 102
Total Casualties 210 209 283 189 112
K+SI CASUALTIES 18 31 22 24 10


From the above table it will be seen that since enforcement began on the Wiltshire stretch of the M4 up to 28th February this year there has been a 57.89% reduction in killed and serious injury casualties when compared with the average of the previous four years for the same period.

Unlike the collisions which can be determined daily, the casualties shown on the above table take longer to validate therefore the most current are for the period ended 28th February.

Please note all figures are correct at the time of issue but subject to amendment as and when new information is received.
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Safe Speed issued the following PR at 12:55pm yesterday:

PR302: M4 cameras: lying with statistics

news: for immediate release

Apparently, in a cynical attempt at deception, the Withshire camera partnership
are releasing some figures that purport to demonstrate 'great success' for
speed camera van on M4 over bridges.

The figures do not support the claims because of the following issues:


ISSUE 1: There's no good reason to expect speed cameras to reduce M4 crashes.

Figures obtained by the Association Of British Drivers for M4 crashes revealed
that 15% had 'excessive speed' as a contributory factor. Many 'excessive speed'
crashes do not involve exceeding a speed limit. So even a 'perfect' change in
driver behaviour caused by the cameras should not be expected to reduce crashes
by more than 15%.


ISSUE 2: Selection bias / regression to mean effect

It is a fact that we tend to apply road safety treatments to places where there
have recently been high casualty numbers. This leads to a selection bias effect
because some of those high casualty numbers will be due to nothing more than
random chance. With no treatment applied, abnormally high casualties tend to
reduce anyway. This effect is also known as 'regression to the mean' (RTTM),
and is very well understood in road safety circles. Recent DfT figures suggest
that RTTM accounts for three quarters of the benefit that has previously been
claimed for speed cameras.


ISSUE 3

Too soon to tell

Road crash figures are subject to considerable random variation. It is
unprofessional and illegitimate to make claims based on a single year's
figures. Examples of random variation appear strongly in the figures released
by Wiltshire Camera Partnership. e.g. between 2003 and 2004 personal injury
collision reduced by 37% from 261 to 165. There were no cameras on the M4 at
the time.


ISSUE 4

Cherry picking of comparison groups.

By choosing favourable years or casualty groups the changes can be exaggerated
to show a desired effect. Other figures - for example M4 casualty figures for
Wiltshire in 2000 and 2001 - are unpublished. Even within the published figures
there is ample room to spin the story. For example we could say: between 2001
and 2002 fatal and serious casualties increased from 18 to 31 - an increase of
72%. This is just as valid as some other comparisons that are being made.


ISSUE 5

System trends

During the period in question we have tended to see national reductions in
injury and serious injury collisions. So if the M4 in Wiltshire was typical of
UK roads we would have expected to see the numbers come down anyway,
irrespective of any local treatment. This has not been allowed for and clearly
exaggerates the benefit being assigned to the cameras.


ISSUE 6

Local conditions

Changes in local conditions have a marked effect on accident rates. For
example, large long term motorway road works would be expected to lead to a
reduction in casualties.


ISSUE 7

Traffic chooses a different route because of the cameras and have their crash
elsewhere. And in the case of the M4, the common alternative is M3/A303. Some
of the apparent reduction may be due to traffic choosing a different route to
stay away from the M4 cameras.

These 7 issues tend to exaggerate the benefits claimed for M4 speed cameras.
Until these issues are accounted for we will not know if there has been a
genuine accident reduction on the M4 or not.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Analysis and interpretation of road accident
statistics requires considerable care and scrupulous honesty because road
accidents are rare and exceptional events. It is necessary to separate random
effects from real changes. I am absolutely incensed that, once again, a camera
partnership is making outrageous and unjustified claims for their cameras based
on insufficient data and insufficient analysis. It is in fact an object lesson
in 'how to lie with statistics'."

"It may not be immediately obvious, but misleading road safety statistics are
actually deadly. They cause life saving resources to be allocated to the WRONG
safety factor, and we therefore miss the opportunity to save lives."

"These figures do not show that speed cameras have made the M4 a safer place.
Instead they show that the Wiltshire camera partnership is unscrupulous when it
come to promoting themselves."

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

Paul Smith was road safety spokesman for the one-off M4 Protest on 30th April
2005. See: http://www.m4protest.org

ABD PR showing causes of M4 crashes:
http://www.abd.org.uk/pr/449.htm

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It has since emerged that M4 Wiltshire deaths in both 1999 and 2000 were 2 in both 1999 and 2000 - exactly the same as the 2005 figure. RTTM anyone?

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

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

The problem is that these scumbags get their falsifications televised to the ordinary general public who don’t realise what methods are being used to make their false claims, this leads the general public into a false understanding that speed cameras are working.

There’s much going on in the background than meets the eye with these camera partnerships and it’s about time the Public know about it.

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

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_________________
Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

..

_________________
Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

I can't believe these SCPs get away with reporting statistical garbage as fact.

What is worse in my opinion is that television news takes what they say as gospel without even attempting to evaluate the accuracy or validity of their spurious claims.

How do they get away with it?

To emphasise the effect their propaganda is having on the masses, while I was watching BBC news "look north" 2 days ago they read out 3 messages; all of them for scameras. Apparently, according to one gentleman, its a "FACT" that speed cameras save lives!

The BBC. Fearlessly independent. Dependent on the Government for funding.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

They get away with it because they just report upon the information they are provided with. If a TV news programme had to dig into the background of every story just in case it wasn't 'gospel' then we'd be always be watching yesterdays news. If the facts and figures are wrong, then its not the fault of the news programme, its that of the organisation that released them.
Investigative journalism such as Panorama and Trevor McDonald Tonight can and do go that extra yard to look behind the facts, figures and stories that are released to the general public.

Playing devil's advocate, it's a pretty significant change compared to the previous years. I don't know if there have been any engineering works which have contributed to the figures, but they were hovering at the 23(ish) average for KSI for the past 4 years and are now down to 10.

They much have achieved something, even if their methods of reporting it are dubious.

This was the report:



Does that mean the other columns relate to the same?

_________________
Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wilt ... 905684.stm

Cameras 'have cut M4 accidents'
Mobile speed camera
The mobile speed cameras were brought into operation in April 2005
Numbers of deaths and crashes have significantly reduced since mobile speed cameras were introduced on the M4 motorway in Wiltshire, figures show.

Wiltshire and Swindon Safety Camera Partnership (WSSCP) began enforcing the 70mph limit in the county last April.

Figures suggest that since then, there has been a 57.89% cut in the number of people killed or seriously injured.

But campaign group Safe Speed, which opposes the cameras, said there was insufficient data to justify the claim.

Spokesman Paul Smith said the assumptions should not be based on a single year's figures, which did not take into account national trends and local conditions.

'Danger unfounded'

"Analysis and interpretation of road accident statistics requires considerable care and scrupulous honesty because road accidents are rare and exceptional events," he said.

"It is necessary to separate random effects from real changes."

David Frampton, manager of the WSSCP admitted there was no specific evidence to show that the cameras had caused the reduction.

But he said: "Nothing else has changed on the motorway since they were introduced. There are no extra police patrols, only the cameras, and we have fewer collisions, so we have to draw some conclusions.

"When we started enforcing on the M4, some people said we would make the road more dangerous, these figures prove that this is not the case. The signs and cameras encourage motorists to slow down."

He added the partnership would continue to enforce the speed limit on the motorway.[/url]

well done paul - turned ther positive PR in to negative lies

but there are other object lessons available, q.v. the laughable "average speed in a collision is 3mph" discussion elswhere on this forum!

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

I agree in part with what you say but journalists also have a responsibility to ensure what they are reporting is accurate and evaluate the reliablity of their source. They do not need to "dig into" the back groud of every single piece of news they broadcast - just the ones from a biased source. It would not take long at all to make this check, regarding the scamera partnership and would certainly not make it yesterdays news.

For example, if colgate were to issue a press release to the BBC stating their tootpastes were the best in the world, the BBC would not report it as news as clearly, claims from a company whos motive is to make money are likely to be misleading and loaded with bias. However if this information came from an independent source such as the British Dental Journal, the source would be deemed as reliable and the story would be reported on the news. So in my opinion, to report claims made by a Scamera partnership as fact, is totally wrong and unacceptable and tterly misleading.

In the case of a SCP it is evident that their claims are likely to be highly biased as their continuation as an organisation depends on it. As do the jobs of the propaganda machines that head these organisations and the lucritive police overtime payments.

I presume this is for the whole of the M4 in Wiltshire? If so then it should be easy to produce some more detailed stats for the years they "left out".

Gareth

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

The "Slight Injury" figures are interesting. These are most likely made up largely of "whiplash" type injuries susteained by rear-end shunts in slow-moving traffic (which speed cameras would not affect one way or the other).

The question is, what was going on in 2003 & 2004, when the "slight injury" figure was highest? M4 roadworks in Wiltshire? Roadworks on an alternative route that forced extra traffic onto the Wiltshire M4? Can anyone confirm this?

As for the fatailies, we are only talking about 2-8 per year here. Sureley these are sufficiently few in number that they can be assessed on an individual basis? The suicide we've mentioned, but I wonder how many were caused by:
- Drivers falling asleep or becoming otherwise incapacitated at the wheel
- HGVs
- Extreme weather conditions
All of which would be immune to change by speed cameras.

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

We surely all know by now that Wiltshire SCP are mendacious dissemblers, and also vindictive and malicious mountebanks too. Of course their salaries and pensions rely on the money rolling in. Its called 'Tax Farming' and in the French Revolution those engaged in it were guillotined. If only !!

Question is:How do we boil them in oil when the media take everything given to them from 'officialdom' as fact and truth.

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

Am I missing something here, but if there were 6 fatal injury collisions in 2001 (top table), how can the outcome be 4 fatalities (bottom table)? Same with 2004 fatalities - 4 collisions resulting in 3 casualties.

edit: Hmmm... there is that 6-week missing section, sounds a bit iffy to me, why didn't they wait until they had complete sets of data, or were they itching to get this out just before the bank holiday weekend?

Gareth

Could be a bit of double-counting, ie there were two vehicles involved in one fatal accident so they counted it as two collisions.



They probably pulled a lot of little tricks to make the figures look good.

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

No, a collision is recorded as a single record, a casualty as a single record and a vehicle as a single record, and the accident record is what they should be reporting when talking about collisions.

Gareth