Following the government announcement of "fairer speeding penalties" (!?), see
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=870 (includes links to official documents).
I issued the following Safe Speed PR:
PR139: You can't measure safe driving in miles per hour, Mr Darling
NEWS: for immediate release
Government proposals fail to reduce the damage done by speed cameras
says Safe Speed.
The Government has announced today "fairer speeding fines". They plan
to introduce variable penalties for speed limit offences. Clearly they
recognise that the present system is unfair - but equally clearly,
they don't understand why it is unfair.
But Safe Speed points out that the danger of a speed cannot be
expressed in terms of the number of miles per hour over the speed
limit. Reference to the immediate circumstances is vital.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign said: "This
is simply a continuation of the blind obsession with numerical speed.
It hasn't delivered an improvement in road safety and it never ever
will. The problem is that there's no magic number of miles per hour
that delivers safety - circumstances are far too variable.
The Government must recognise that road safety is far more complex -
forcing drivers to pay more attention to the speed limit than they do
to the road ahead is potentially highly dangerous."
"The big problem", Paul explains, "is that any speed at all can be
deadly. Even at an impact speed of 30mph, according to government
approved research, 50% of pedestrians struck by vehicles die.
Fortunately in the real world this does not reflect reality. In 2002,
in 30 and 40mph speed limits just 0.41% of child pedestrians struck by
cars died. This is crystal clear evidence that road safety is already
being delivered by drivers slowing down way below the speed limit when
necessary. That's the behaviour we need to improve road safety."
There's no research into the net effects of high levels of
concentration on speed enforcement. There are a range of very
important side effects and false messages that outweigh the potential
benefits. For example:
* Speed cameras tend to make drivers concentrate on their
speedometers, rather than the road ahead. According to "straw poll
research" carried out by Safe Speed, three quarters of drivers give up
at least 40% of their attention to the speedometer in the immediate
vicinity of a speed camera. Amazingly there are no better figures
available.
* Government messages about the importance of the speed limit leads
to a tendency for drivers to believe that their speed is safe if they
are not exceeding the speed limit. This is extremely dangerous.
Paul continues: "It's very important that drivers don't go too fast,
but you can't measure safe driving in miles per hour, Mr Darling.
There is no magic number that represents a safe and appropriate speed.
Driving by numbers isn't safe - it's deadly.
Then the phone started ringing. I gave info to various journalists and did 4 local radio items as follows:
BBC Radio Humberside at 11:50 am
Radio Forth (Edinburgh), pre-record to go out at 1pm, 2pm, 5pm and 6pm.
BBC GMR (Manchester at 5:20pm
BBC Radio derby at 5:40pm
All went very well indeed.