Safe Speed Forums

SPEED TRAP AXE ‘CUTS CASUALTIES’

Saturday October 2,2010
By Charlotte Gray

THE first town to switch off its speed cameras is celebrating the decision after accident rates and fines plummeted.

There have been no deaths on Swindon’s roads since the fixed cameras were turned off in August last year.

In the past 12 months, the town has had just two serious accidents and 14 slight accidents.

This is compared to one death, five serious and 15 minor crashes the year before. The council raked in £80,000 less than the previous year, issuing 1,341 fewer speeding tickets.

Councillor Peter Greenhalgh, in charge of transport for Swindon, said: “I am encouraged by these figures. They justify what we did.”

Swindon’s move came after the Government cut £38million from the Road Safety Grant, which funds the devices.

But the AA’s Andrew Howard said: “We have said that cameras should not be switched off. ”

RTTM?

The effects of RTTM is far stronger at a spot/local level than over an area that's county wide (where the effects of the sum of all local areas are averaged out).

The accident rate at a "site" (a short stretch of road) can fluctuate greatly; the ratios can easily exceed 1:5 over three year timeframes. That kind of fluctuation is practically unheard of at county level (and and has never occurred at national level).

For years, scamera partnerships (and, indeed, central government) have been conveniently ignoring this phenomenon. If we now start seeing cameras switched off and a general downward trend in KSIs, it will put them in the difficult position of either having to admit that the anti-camera lobby was right, dreaming up some other cause for the reductions, OR saying that it's down to RTTM - an effect that they have, very publicly, dismissed on inumerable occasions.