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Speed cameras failing to save lives
Jun 20 2004
Greg Lewis, Wales on Sunday
MORE than one in four speed cameras across Wales have FAILED to reduce fatalities and serious road crashes.
A Wales on Sunday study of Department for Transport figures for every single Welsh camera reveals that 13 per cent did not affect the number of people killed or seriously injured.
And the same number again actually showed an increase in the number of serious injuries and road deaths.
However, across all the sites in the country the number of deaths was cut from an average 238.5 a year to 100 - a massive drop of almost 60 per cent.
And there were also large falls in the number of lesser accidents in each of the four police force areas of Wales.
The information surrounding speed cameras - one of the most contentious of road safety issues - is a statistical minefield.
The overall number of deaths on Welsh roads continues to fluctuate.
According to Department of Transport figures there were 169 deaths in 2000, 187 a year later and 147 in 2002.
But we looked at 218 fixed and mobile camera sites at which the number of road deaths and serious injuries for three years before the cameras were installed could be compared with the crash statistics for 2002-03.
In the South Wales, Gwent and Dyfed Powys police force areas there were 59 fixed cameras and 132 mobile locations at which cameras are placed from time to time - a total of 191 speed traps.
In this region, 54 cameras - 28 per cent - had either seen no change or an increase in the number of annual accidents in which people were killed or seriously injured (KSIs).
Eight fixed sites, including Wellington Street, Canton, Cardiff, and the A476 at Gorslas, near Ammanford, saw an increase in KSIs.
One of the most dramatic mobile camera failures was on the A4139 at Pembroke where KSIs had increased 10 times - from a 0.7 a year average before the camera to seven in 2002-03.
Serious crashes also increased on a busy 60mph-stretch of the A470 south of Builth Wells and doubled on Cilfynydd Road, Cilfynydd, near Pontypridd.
However, a review of the total number of deaths and serious injuries on roads where speed cameras have been installed paints a different picture.
The sites in Mid and South Wales had witnessed an average 190.5 KSIs before the cameras were installed and 87 afterwards, in 2002-2003.
The success stories include:
nthe stretch by the Curry store in North Road, Cardiff, where the rate of KSIs was halved;
nthe fixed camera on Ystrad Road, Ystrad, Rhondda, where 2.3 KSIs a year has been reduced to none;
na mobile camera on a 30mph stretch of the A4138 at Hendy where KSIs were reduced to a third;
nand the A476 at Thomas Arms, Llanelli, where a 4.7 a year rate of KSIs has been reduced to one.
The figures from an independent report commissioned by the Department for Transport also recorded the effect of cameras on the number of personal injury collisions (PICs).
It reports them down in each force area: North Wales (down 41 per cent); Gwent (down 39 per cent); South Wales (down 32 per cent); Dyfed Powys (down 28 per cent).
Across North Wales figures are available for 27 fixed and mobile speed camera sites.
At the vast majority of sites the number of KSIs fell after the cameras were installed. There were particular successes at:
nthe A541 Wrexham to Cefn y Bedd;
nthe A525 Ruthin to Denbigh;
nand the A483/A5 Ruabon to Chirk.
But at two sites - the A5025 Amlwch to Menai Bridge, and the A548 Rhyl to Prestatyn - the number of casualties had risen.
Two other cameras, on the A5119 between Mold and Flint and the A458 between Gronant and Flint, had made no difference to the numbers killed or seriously injured. However, the average number of KSIs across the speed trap areas before the cameras was 48. Afterwards it stands at 13.
A spokeswoman for Arrive Alive, which organises the speed camera campaign in North Wales, said: "We are targeting the most at-risk roads in the area and seeing a decrease in speed and a decrease in KSIs.
"In 2002 in North Wales there was a 15 per cent decrease in KSIs across the region. But at our specific camera sites, which is only six per cent of the road network, we bought the KSIs down by 35 per cent.
"Inevitably out of all the sites some have seen collisions in which people have been killed or seriously hurt."
Former police superintendent John Rowling manages the Mid and South Wales Safety Camera Partnership, which covers the Gwent, South Wales and Dyfed Powys police force areas.
He has extensive experience in road safety and was involved in the installation of the first traffic light camera in Cardiff.
"We have seen a 33 per cent drop in personal injury collisions across Mid and South Wales," he said. "I know the cameras work.
"I am not going to apologise for a couple of sites where there has not been improvement.
"If I have ten sites, with serious injuries down at nine and up at one, that is an achievement. If we save one life or one person from a serious injury then this programme is a success."
Road safety charity Brake wants more cameras. Campaigns officer Simon Collister said:
"Communities throughout the UK are calling for speed cameras in their area to slow drivers down before someone is killed."
But Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed campaign, says speed cameras do not work and the statistics are "extremely misleading".
"They contain a statistical error called regression to the mean," he stated.
"Accidents are fairly randomly distributed across the road network and the rules mean cameras are put where there has been a large grouping of accidents, but the groupings occur randomly as well.
"A road may have a couple of bad years where it has three accidents and so it gets a camera. The road goes back to its normal one accident a year and they say the camera has cut accidents by 67 per cent. They should also analyse sites which have been earmarked for cameras but haven't received them."
He added: "We earned ourselves the safest roads in the world before we had speed cameras.
"It is important to give very good, clear and accurate information to drivers, pedestrians, cyclists. At the moment we are not getting that.
"We are telling drivers their prime duty is not to exceed the speed limit but their prime duty is to conduct themselves in a safe and responsible manner and the two are by no means equivalent."
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