Safe Speed Forums

Casualties rise at some speed camera sites
Published on Thursday 25 August 2011 06:00

Not all cameras intended to reduce speeding and road casualties have not been entirely successful in their objectives according to figures released by the Department for Transport yesterday.

CASUALTY rates at some speed camera sites have worsened since their installation, according to figures released by the Department for Transport.

A mixed picture of the effectiveness of the cameras emerged from the statistics though some areas, including the Humber and South Yorkshire, reported clear-cut reductions in accidents.

The Safer Roads Humber scheme said that between 2003 and 2010 there had been a 58 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured at its camera sites, as well as a 11 per cent reduction in average speeds at the sites. Decreases in accident figures were reported at 79 camera sites, with only nine reporting an increase.

South Yorkshire Safety Camera Partnership said there had been a 49 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured at camera sites between 2008 and 2010. The number of collisions fell at 43 sites but rose at 13.

West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership was unable to provide a breakdown of site specific comparisons but said there were 186 fewer accidents causing fatal or serious injury and 678 fewer slight injury collisions between 2007 and 2009 when compared to the previous three years. There are no fixed speed camera sites in North Yorkshire.

So far 75 local authority areas have published some or all of their information showing accident and casualty rates, as well as speeds at camera sites before and after the introduction of the cameras.
But of these 75, only 46 have published full data, with the other 29 publishing partial data. And 72 local authorities have not published any data, or not enough for the effectiveness of the camera sites to be judged.

The information included the records for a camera site in Poole, in Dorset, where three serious injury accidents were recorded in 2001, 2002 and 2009, while the numbers of incidents in which people received minor injuries had increased, with 11 in 2009 compared with six in 2001 and seven slight collisions in 2002.

There were also nine slight-injury casualties at a camera on the A605 at Elton near Peterborough in 2009 – the highest figures for any year since 1990.

But at a camera site in Victoria Avenue in Cambridge there was only one slight-injury accident in 2009 and only three in 2010 compared with 1997 when there were two incidents in which people were either killed or seriously injured and 16 recorded incidents in which people were slightly hurt.

The disparity led Robert Gifford, executive director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, to question the value of the Department for Transport (DfT) collating the figures in the current form.
He added: “As far as can be seen, each partnership has published the information in a different format. It is therefore almost impossible to draw any real conclusions about the effectiveness or otherwise of cameras in any specific locations. It is also unclear as to what individual citizens can understand from the tables provided.
“I would urge the Department for Transport to look to a common format for any further publication to ensure that this is more than just a token exercise.”

Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said: “Local residents have a right to expect that when their council spends money on speed cameras, they publish information to show whether those cameras are helping to reduce accidents or not. I hope that this information will help local people to make informed judgments about the impact cameras are having on their local roads.”