Safe Speed Forums

I'm sorry but since when is 30 something % in the case of the government and a very small percentage in the case of cameras a majority?

Rich, your focus on peer-review doesn't take into account the full reality faced by those wanting to influence public policy.

I'm all in favour of the academic peer review process (as a Professor I would have to be!) and have done a fair amount of both reviewing and authoring academic papers in my own field (which is technical and educational in focus, but nothing to do with road safety, so I claim no expertise there). BUT as has been said in another thread, there are weaknesses in the peer-review process as well.

Peer-review can only help establish "fact" in "hard science" disciplines, the more a field involves cultural, political, behavioural, social, psychological (etc) factors, the more different interpretations can be placed on on the same evidence AND the more open to critcism becomes the process of gathering the evidence itself. Road safety is such a field surely?

Also in these more "diverse" fields, the peer review process starts to reflect the culture/dominant views of the journals in question, and reviewers are rarely selected (in my experience) from those from opposing theoretical "camps".

Nevertheless I WOULD like to see some more formal outputs from SafeSpeed.

BUT winning academic arguments and gaining peer-reviewed recognition for one's assertions DOES NOT guarantee that society and government either hear or act on them.

The thing that matters is PUBLIC DEBATE (academic backup can help in winning public debate, but far from ensures it, Governments and vested interests frequently take note only of the evidence that suits them).

If Paul's ideas don't hold water, real public debate would expose them. Attacking them for lack of formal publication is, whilst "true", a cop-out from engaging in debate of the actual points he makes.

By PUBLIC DEBATE, I DON'T mean things like these fora (I agree they tend to be inhabited by the converted), I mean the media - because that is where policy battles are won and lost.

Where precisely did he ask that?




Again, where did he make that claim? I don't see it anywhere.



He doesn't have to make any points of substance against the SS argument, in fact he appears to have been quite careful not to other than citing a couple of instances to demonstrate his point. He is questioning the lack of independent peer review; stating that this is not all its cracked up to be doesn't really address the point.





Yes, he was using it as a reference to demonstrate the principle of a specious argument. The actual minuatae regarding bird flu vaccines is irrelevant.


I'm not asking you to. I do at least manage to stick to the point being made by the poster, not ones I think he made, assume he made or want to make myself without first introducing them as new material.

Look Wildy, I'm not here to start a fight with you or the Mad Cat clan, I can't take on half the SS membership by myself . I'm trying to make a serious point here, and that is if you want proper, serious focussed debate with a SS opponent then one surely has to engage the indivual with a bit of respect? IMHO, enormous, round the houses posts and messing with their username in quotes isn't the way to do it.

Riggers my mate - would not draw her claws - beleive I do know this girl from changing her nappies when she was aged 12 months or so!




I really think Richard is intelligent enough to appreciate Wildy's sense of fun!

Riggers - the girl really lives for every second and given what happened - I am not going to throw any stones at her - cousin or not. When she says my brothers, sister and self were hit hard by those very personal events - she's not joking. I am ashamed to admit that I nit picked on anything moving at the time

And with respect - I've worked at the sharp edge , thropwn up at what I've seen and cleared up and the Mad Doc has neen truly shocked as junior on A&E

I think we have more REAL exepienced that Mr Lyon , Mr Monbiot and all other ivory tower academics.



By the way - I have a very decent class degree in Maths and Physics from a top ten Uni and family have quallificatiojns s which place them very much on "awesome and to them rostrum!

Can take this guy on and to pieces anytime I choose really - Oh and by the way - I do enforce the law - care to trry us out inDurham - Riggerss, Richard and all your pals cos I can guarantee we do pretty darned well on FINE collections!

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

richlyon, thanks for the sober and persuasive bringing of light into this freak-show shadowland, and for remaining sufficiently composed - despite the usual 'running interference' from the demented Greek chorus - to give no grounds for your account to be summarily closed and your contributions deleted.
I'd like to buy you a drink, and then have your children.

Can anyone tell me what those police officers who are members of this forum imagine they are doing?

Right Richard then - let's be having yo9ur credentials then

Me? Have very good class degree in Maths and Physics from a top Uni - UMIST - and joined as family tradition more or less. Did dally with alternaive but got hooked on prospect of improving my driving and making an impact on security andbeiung useful to my fellow man!

I trained at Hendon and emerged from course with some accolades and pats on back - and to date have worked drugs/porn/traffic and ma trained in firearms as well.

So let's be hearing your expertise then - armchair road safety expert who collects newspaper cuttings on a website as far as I can find - none of which have been "peer reviewed" as they are after all - the opinion of a journalist

So please - no disrepect but I have looked at your site in entirety now and not discovered any mind numbing "peer reviewed article on road safety on there" so far. Sorry if I sound blunt - but you really do have no idea about road safety in your ivory tower up there. I don't do "academic" - I do "enforcing law fair and square" and one of my vows as rookie was to "protect the public" - and I still take this very very seruiously. But armchair academics who "peer review" and arrogantly refuse to read real life anecdotes unless some academic has "peer reviewed it" have no idea as to what really goes on - do they?

Listen mate - I have now spent over 25 years as and actually enjoyed my career to date. So much so that I do not want to retire even though I have the service record to do so. I'm still a "young "man with plenty to offer - and they wish to retain me!

Now - I've lost count of the numenr of incidents which caused mytrather queasy stomach to get the better of me on a clear up - and 90% of hese have not been down to speed bit more to a lack of driver judgement and I would say that one of more element of COA ST was missing .

By the way COAST per DIS/SPEED AWARE courses will feature soon enough in ytour accredited \"Accident Prevention Analysis " doo -dah as it is a police/safety partnerhsip initiatiive and so far [i[ all evidence to date shows we are correct in this project [/i]

I aslo note you fail to recognise the piece on Durham and N Yorks in this peer reviewed tome you are so anxious to see safepeed within Oh - no speed cameras too - and we get a plaudit there....

How odd and we do it without cameras too.. now there's a novel thought! Well - we do without fixed ones - - ummmm - - er what' s in the cars ... er - um secret

and then we have a cam van - but heck - we use our professional judgement - and guess what - our public don't "hate us" and actually help us fight crime as a result Well I never - what a quaint old fashioned concept - eh?:



I am not bothered about useful gadgets - use an origin myself if in strange Kodak territory If they help folk comply and drive safely - no issues whatsoever. A Wildy pointed out to you - they are "useful" - same as driving to my C O A S T helps a dirver be hazard aware?

You think I give this COAST tip for the fun of it ? Forms part of DIS and Speed aware basis - and about to appear in your lovely accredited journal!

So prove me, John Lyons, Paul Ripley, John Franklin and police trainers wrong when they suggest concentrating, observing, anticipating and allowing space and time - and bear in mind all these authors have been "peer reviewed" by the journal you hold so close to your heart here! Speed cameras rather undermine by making people believe they are safe so long as they adhere to the lollipop. = per speed cam folk. Yeah - OK so tell that to person we've scraped up NOT speeding in frezing fog, ice, snow then or to the drunk pedestrian we sent ot the morgue last week! I'd rather a real safety message any day of the week . But even so - tell me how we do keep it safe without forests of your peer reviewed scams and how hinset cops on patrol do a much beter job?
.

Basically mate - could not give a stuff about any peer review - I'm more concerned with getting a safety message across and I do so via this site and the Swiss have passed this on elsewhere! Speed is just one isolated issue - but you can have fatals at low speeds - and I've scraped these up -Richard - so do NOT dare bleat on at me about speed being a lkiller - BAD DRIVING practices KILL and I will admit that bad choice of speed or even unaweareness of speed or power of the vehicle all contribute to this - and Ian , Stephen, Dutch are more than aware of this - unlike yourself in your academic ivory tower. Real world training counts and I am more than convinced all "peer reviewed trained at sharp edge Bib would back me on this!



Where on this site does this feature - guy's not about abolishing speed limits and - forum jokey banter apart - not seen any such promotion on here and anyone who does - getrs full blast of my temper and my mate Riggers backs me on this.

But guy is merely pointing out that speed cameras are not a cure all and there is a very real danger that this government has been led down garden path by loony lefty peer reviewers from questionable "new" unis.

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Hit quote key in error

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Professor, at the risk of repeating myself, the culture/dominant views of the journals in question are currently the least of SafeSpeed's problems. Before you review the abstract aspect of the proposition at which the culture operates, you check to make sure all the plumbing is in place and hangs together i.e. that the basic arguments are sound and free of defects.

I don't know if you have looked at the plumbing around here very closely. It does not hang together very well. In fact, if you do look at it you'll notice there are no arguments more sophisticated than the "She's got warts and squint, so she's a WITCH!" variety (I suspect Wildcat will have a seizure at this point, if the flu references foxed him).

That sort of thing is all very well if all you aspire to is a bit of rabble rousing. If your aim is to reach a broader and more mature audience (which SafeSpeed presumably now does), it simply won't do. So irrespective of whether he can secure approval at the cultural level, he does at least need to demonstrate he can survive criticism at the nuts and bolts level.

Equally, even if gaining peer-reviewed recognition is not sufficient, it is still necessary.

My 'credentials'? Well, not that I've ever thought of them in such terms in this context. But to the extent that it matters:

A couple of engineering degrees (one to distinction). So enough to have a pretty intuitive grasp of the disproportionate influence of small changes of velocity on impact energy at low and high speeds.

A bit of time as a steely-eyed military aviator. So a fair bit about the mechanics of speed management in high workload environments. And enough aeromedicine to understand some of the weird things that happen to our speed perception mechanism above 15 mph. Oh, and the arrogance and inflated belief in their own powers of judgement that can creep up on the over-trained.

And a bit of time running a very large manufacturing facility. So a fair bit about practical behavioural safety, some of the daft things that people do at three in the morning when they think no-one is looking, and the dafter they seem to get the safer they think they are.

As well as tax payer, citizen, and 250 mile per week commuter who can't help noticing how civilized it gets in speed camera zones. Time. After time. After time.

And - no, you won't find anything of mine that needs peer reviewing. After all, I'm not trying to persuade anyone to change anything.

[Deleted]

As I'm sure most of us here do.
But what's the relevance?
How are such changes in velocity determined from free travelling speed?
And, more to the point, how can cameras possibly have any effect on impact velocity?

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

Again, in a thread devoted to a discussion on peer review, in a forum devoted to honesty and accuracy queries, on a site peddling adverts for speed camera detectors, I'm much more interested in discussing the quality of your defence of your views that they don't.

I hesitate to reply to this here as I do not want to deflect from the important topic Rich has started regarding peer review.

However, I have a take on the latest question. If a hazard develops while one's eyes are on the road, one scrubs off speed, if necessary by planting the brake, if there is any risk of impact, in order to minimise risk of damage/injury. If one's eyes are on the speedo, one doesn't. Better to see someone walk out while doing 35 and get down to 10 than not see him walk out and still be doing 25.

Richard - can assure you that we have all feet on ground - drimmed into me and the lads and lasses under my leadership that they are always learning




Really?

Lancs at least has some input - the Speed Course input can be noted in some areas there - perhaps their invites are beginning to filter thought enough to make the markied difference. But we will not know unitl they have collated and accredited their results regarding their Speed Course - and it is without doubt a good one.


Driven North Wales recently and for first time in my life - I was seriously worried by what I saw going on there. Bad overtakes - inappropriate speed on rural roads, non existent lane discipline on the A55

I have been in Cambridgeshire, Kent, Notts, S Wales and down to South West - all heavy on the speed cameras and to be honest =- overall lane discipline, tial gating =, speeding and slowing hard for speed cameras has not left me with any warm feelings towards thier contribution ot improving driving standards.

Go to North Yorks though and Durham (But leave Weardale and Teasdale out of this - we have a serious born again motobike problem there and we are literally tearing our hair out over getting the safety message across - especially when this area more or less accounts for all our disasters. We are not going start chasing them at those speeds - let's put it that way We get the photo and take it from there - if they stay alive that is!

But so long as you keep away from the biker disaster area - which we are still working on and will continue to try to get under control - permament presence seems to be making its mark - think you would find our roads are very tranquil overall.




Not seen any opinion made by you - yet you do not seem to accept anything which has not been peer-reviewed. I do not need an academic to make up my mind for me - I had my mind mind up by what I 've scraped off roadways over a lot of years - and I can tell you that each accident is specific to itself - one or all involved making a minor but fatal error. Some have been below a speed limit and resulted in death and others high speed and minor injuiries. I really thus could not state speed is a sole cause - a contributory factor in many cases maybe - but not a prime solitary cause - and perhaps if we make drivers more safety, safety led, COAST aware - we could then start to address the overriding problem in bad driving habits.

I also cannot concur with you that speed cameras improve driving standards since all they appear to do is urge compliance to a speed limit for a half second of road markings at the camera mounting and that is about all they do. They do not stop the reckless overtake after the site or on other roads - nor do they make people drive below lollipop sign in icy or foggy conditions - and you have not seen or observed what I have seen and prosecuted over a long career span. Now please do not believe this government's spin on cams curing all traffic andmotoring ills - the solution lies with the human being behind the wheel and I would rather tick them off in person, send them on an improvement course than just send them a tickert 14 days later for passing a speed camera at 4/5 mph above the posted limit. Road safety does not, alas, work in such a simplified format.

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Excellent. Given that Paul has stated (way back) that efforts towards scientific publication is already being given (the timeframe is irrelevant) hence answering your original question, perhaps you could review and pass comment on the validity and significance of the number one topic, the one which arguably gave SafeSpeed the following it has, the one which persuaded users to financially contribute to the upkeep and progression of this site:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/rttm

Do you also believe this to be flawed, or do you really need independent scientific verification of that effect? Be honest and accurate with your review.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

You appear to have satisfied yourself that they do, and therefore I'm interested in why.
In the interests of even-handedness, I take it that you've examined the arguments in support cameras as critically as you've examined the arguments here.
If that is the case, then why have you not found those arguments wanting?
And, if you're really convinced of the arguments as to exactly how cameras bring about a decrease in accidents, and you believe that the case for them is impeccable, then please share it with us. Perhaps this is a topic for another thread, so we can start another one, but if you're so sure of your standpoint then you should have no problem discussing it.

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

Smeggy - two words - Rose Baker!

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

I was thinking of the other two - Linda and Mountain

I started another thread here as a general where did things go wrong:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5367

Good grief. Safe Sped does not, nor has ever, advocated or condoned law breaking or civil disobedience. Since you have so little understanding of the campaign, its content and its objectives, you disqualify yourself from commenting on the validity of the underlying analysis. Clearly you haven't bothered to read enough to even understand the basics.

But I agree that the information is 'a bit of a monster'. It really isn't easy to dip in and understand the whole. That's a serious problem that I must address. It won't be addressed by scientific publication. It may be addressed by editing the web site into a book. In the meantime I have the more advanced indexing and cross referencing in my head - and I'm available to answer questions.

The following document: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/againstcameras.html (also as a word document: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/againstcameras.doc ) provides a sound introduction and overview to the Safe Speed case. If you really wish to get involved in the debate, the least you need to do is study the text in some detail.

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