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| Police Officer and Member |
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Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 22:53
Posts: 565
Location: Kendal
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Graeme wrote: Whether you're open enough to see this or not I don't really care. Having debates like this is good because it lets us re-examine our own beliefs, and you have helped strengthen mine - so thanks!
Agreed!
As has been clearly stated the inclusion of all collisions in the stats could only ever serve to reduce the recorded percentage of excess speed involved collisions, given that;
A) The more serious collisions are dealt with by the police
and
B) The stats show that the more serious the collisions, the higher the percentage of excess speed involvement.
Having read some of this thread,  , I felt that a post I made on another forum may have some relevance here, so apologies for the cut'n'paste, and the length. It was a discussion about different methods of reducing road risk.
I thought it might serve to assist Mike in realising that road risk has so much more to do with the type of driver rather than a simple snapshot of their driving, hence the reason for the failure of current enforcement strategy.
"By way of explaining my thoughts on road risk, I believe (with the utmost respect) that to lay the blame for road risk on lack of skill is to erect another smokescreen along the same lines as speed kills. It is another method (much like the ‘speed kills’ argument) of apportioning guilt or blame to the group of drivers who least deserve it.
Let me explain…
My wife (mid 30s) drives our car for less than 2,000 miles per year. She learned to drive in the late 80s and has taken no instruction since then. She has never been able to parallel park, and would drive 20 miles rather than three point turn. But she is average at doing the stuff she needs to do, and drives accordingly.
Contrast this with the 18 year old boy racer who, since the day he passed his test, and probably before, has been trying out his car to see what he can do with it. Now that he has been driving for 9 months he has all his ‘circus skills’ down to a fine art. He will be working his way through the book of tricks; he can ‘J’ turn, handbrake turn, and he’d leave other drivers standing at the traffic lights as soon as red is joined by amber. He has made reverse and parallel parking into an art form. His reactions are razor sharp; all his mates will verify that.
Put both of these drivers straight into a driving test (both knowledge and skill aspects) and the boy racer would be much more likely to pass than my wife.
The driving skills of the boy racer are significantly more tuned than those of my wife. He has a fascination with learning and developing more and more ‘skills of the road’ so that he can show off to his mates.
But take a step back and look at the risks associated with these two drivers and their respective skill levels. Look in particular at the road fatalities caused by these groups.
All the statistical evidence shows that for road fatalities, boy racers when thrill seeking are a massively higher risk than almost all other road user groups. Their risk per mile in comparison to a driver like my wife will be monstrous.
How then does road risk square with driving skill.
The simple answer is that road risk has really very little to do with skill level – as long as a basic level of skill is attained.
It has much more to do with mental attitude and responsibility, in other words, your state of mind when driving. (as JT once said, the difference between driving skill and motoring skill)
A boy racer, drink driver, criminal driver or sport biker will kill because their state of mind is that they set out knowingly to engage with significant extra risk on the road. Similarly the tired driver or elderly driver has a state of mind which cannot assimilate all the necessary information adequately.
Once we accept that an adverse state of mind is the primary precursor in a very high percentage of serious road traffic collisions we can then understand;
- Why road fatalities follow the pattern they do.
- Why the current road safety strategy (more cameras, less police) is completely failing.
To try to explain these points a bit further, the way I like to look at risk on the road is to consider what we do when driving, and at it’s most basic level we drive from A to B by avoiding collisions. We probably make a conscious ‘collision avoiding’ decision somewhere in the region of 10 times per mile possibly more.
Because we seem to manage this task remarkably and consistently well, it goes without saying it is a skill that doesn't require a massive amount of ability to be able to do it successfully.
Looking at the user groups who cause road fatalities, I have made an educated guess at the risk per user group, and converted that to the number of miles driven for each fatality caused (which directly relates to the number of collision avoiding decisions made).
We drive on average 100 million miles before causing a road fatality. If we drive on average 10,000 miles per year, that means we drive on average for 10,000 years before causing a fatality.
These averages are hugely misrepresentative of the real situation, because of the predominance of certain specific road user groups within this average picture.
I've tried to separate out some specific groups, looking at their likely percentage of road miles, the percentage of road fatalities caused, and the factor above or below the average.
Drink Driver
Percentage of road miles...........................0.01%
Percentage of fatalities caused.................... 20%
Fatality Risk Factor.................................. x 2,000 Criminal Driver (joy rider, twoccer, actively involved in crime)
Percentage of road miles..........................0.01%
Percentage of fatalities caused..................... 8%
Fatality Risk Factor................................. x 800 Tired driver – (falling asleep)
Percentage of road miles..........................0.01%
Percentage of fatalities caused..................... 5%
Fatality Risk Factor..................................x 500 Boy Racer and Sports Biker – while thrill seeking
Percentage of road miles..........................0.1%
Percentage of fatalities caused.................. 30%
Fatality Risk Factor..................................x 300 Elderly driver (over 75)
Percentage of road miles..........................0.1%
Percentage of fatalities caused................... 5%
Fatality Risk Factor................................. x 50 Remainder of average road users
Percentage of road miles.........................+95%
Percentage of fatalities caused.................~20%
Fatality Risk Factor................................. x 1/5We know that collision avoiding decisions take place regularly per mile travelled, so we can assess the risk of each group by looking at the number of miles covered per fatality;
Number of thousands of miles covered per fatality
Drink Driver.................................................50
Criminal Driver............................................125
Tired driver..................................................200
Boy racer/thrill seeker...............................333
Elderly driver..............................................2,000
Normal compliant drivers...........................500,000. That's half a billion miles, 50,000 years of motoring, or 5 billion collision avoiding decisions.
Because of the proliferation in recent years of speed cameras, and the consequent reduction in traffic police numbers, we now have a situation where speed cameras are prosecuting many more than half of all moving road traffic offences.
If this is the preferred method of road safety enforcement, then we need to be sure that it is an effective tool, i.e. that it has the ability to reduce collisions.
How many fatal accidents are within their total zone of influence?
Looking at the primary causation groups it’s easy to see that none of these user groups will be affected by speed cameras. Boy racers and bikers may have to displace themselves from speed camera roads onto other roads where they feel safe from prosecution, but that is not helping fatality reduction, in fact it’s likely to aggravate the situation.
Therefore cameras can influence only the compliant group – the 95%+ of us who cause <20% of road fatalities.
We know from the government stats that 12% of fatalities have excess speed as a possible contributory factor
I believe it would be a higher figure than that, but I also believe that the vast majority of excess speed fatalities would be cause by boy racers, bikers and criminal drivers.
I’d suggest that when we look at the ordinary compliant road user, significantly less than 12% of their fatalities have excess speed as a possible contributory factor, probably somewhere near 2%, but if we look at, say 5% as an upper estimate, we can now see that one hundredth (5% x 20%) of fatalities might be able to be influenced by cameras, i.e. ~30 fatalities annually.
We know that the average speed on Britain’s roads is not changing, so it’s reasonable to suggest that cameras only mainly alter speeds within their zone of influence, which is likely to be no more than 2 miles. (probably much less)
If there are 6000 camera sites in UK then that means that they might influence speeds for approximately 12,000 miles or one twentieth of the road system.
Putting this all together it means that the entire camera infrastructure in the UK can exert its entire significant presence in an effort to attempt to avert……
Wait for it…..
1.5 fatalities per year!But even then, considered opinion is that, at all camera zones of influence, KSIs involving compliant road users rise, because of their negative distractive influence. This effect is recognised by the camera partnership which is why they don’t like position cameras directly at school exits or difficult junctions… they are just too dangerous.
So in their effort to influence the 1.5 fatalities per year they can have some effect on, they are likely to be causing;
- No reduction in collisions at the sites
- An undoubted increase in displacement and distraction collisions.
- Predictable enforcement, therefore able to be manipulated by the real high risk groups.
- A belief that they are achieving some good, when in fact they are useless.
- A serious misrepresentation of the facts to the public
- A significant reduction in the real energies to influence the 99.95% of road collision that cameras have no mechanism to deal with.
- A gradual but remorseless reduction of responsibility and positive motoring attitude on the road, which, as already stated, is one of the primary collision precursors.
- Too many other negatives to mention.
This is from someone who, until three years ago, blindly believed the DfT hype about camera effectiveness.
The moral is: If you want to argue the benefit of the speed camera, don't look into it too much. "
_________________
Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.
Ian
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