Safe Speed Forums

This is posted from another thread that is locked. As someone who drifted away from the site because it didn't really fulfil what I expected I came back when I saw SafeSpeed in the news again. I asked this:



There was one answer, but it didn't point to any prominent stuff on the website. It seemed to say that as speed cameras replaced traffic police the site was a road safety campaign.

To me:

SafeSpeed (conception-2007) was a reasonably valiant attempt by an undoubtedly committed man at a road safety campaign using the removal of speed cameras from UK roads as its core mantra. It presented large amounts of evidence to back up the mantra as part of the website. Unfortunately the evidence was never peer-reviewed and no formal attempt was ever made (to my knowledge) to procure any sort of scientific endorsement by respected experts in the field of road safety. There were several objections to material published on the website which were not dealt with satisfactorily in my view (Joksch stuff is one example)

SafeSpeed (2007-present) is a low-traffic, predominantly right wing motoring internet forum who's members desire the removal of speed cameras from UK roads.

But it uses TRL documents as its core - are you suggesting these are flawed?

That's utterly irrelevant! Anyone can use the right documents to come to the wrong conclusions!

The conclusions derived from the evidence were never formally authenticated.

So you agree that the governments evidence is flawed and that it can be used to draw any conclusion?

In what way is that a misrepresentation, the OP states that the data can be used to draw any conclusion, but when it differs from your closed mindset it is wrong. Why is that?

I can only speak for myself, but I strongly believe that road safety has gone out of the window and the government have lost thier way prefering to lower direct taxes and then make up the rest by penalty taxation. You get taxed for running a car, moving house, putting your bins out.

I care about orderly well designed roads with good signs and people having good paths and using them in a predictable manner. This government believe that cameras will fix everything, that removing predictability and signs and order is good (because it costs less).

I like being within the law and this government keeps moving the bounderies of the law so they can criminalise more of us. (dixie is right) I am a nightmare with paperwork, the government make me a criminal for not remembering to send a sorn document every year. For forgetting to take the dustbin in, feeding the birds, not stopping someone smoking at work. parking, stoping with your engine on. Life used to be so simple. All this green twaddle pees me off. I have been a moderate green for decades with modist cars, about 10 flights in 47 years, energy saving bulbs for 20 years. Then these Johny Come Latelys appear and in between thier 3 houses 2 carribian hollidays and a couple of ministerial cars they notice a chance to fine me, tax me, restrict me.

I do care about road safety and report every serious pot hole, broken light, overgrown roundabouts & manhole cover. I am often treated like S**t by the highways authorities when I push to keep the standards up.

Only a small proportion of people getting caught by speed cameras are a high risk to the rest of the public. It is a scatter gun being used where an accurate rifel is required.

The public on foot and bike are totally suicidal. We could halve thier road deaths just by staying sober,following the paths, wearing reflective gear and using lights.

I concider my self to be left wing. However I become very anarchistic when people bully me or try to emotionaly blackmail me.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

And I thought I'd add, Pot calling the kettle black - you have 31 pagesa of misrepresenting everything that was said on a previous thread - including that I claim you can become immortal by reading the highway code!!!!

Quite. The 27 - 30%+ speed kills figures that keep getting brought back up have been pulled out by avid journos, politicians, etc. even after the TRL admitted to them being incorrect.

If the conclusions had been formal authenticated, this by a government funded body, then the campaign would have moved on I suspect as the cameras would have been removed.

Ignoring the specifics of this campaign for now.

Is not the point of a campaign to change the current point of view about a particular subject? If we just said "the government does not agree so why bother" every time someone tried to change peoples minds about a subject how would life today be?

Women would not have the vote.
We would still have slaves in this country.

I am not trying to equate Safespeed with being as important as the above but the principle is the same.

I think the SS campaign should be a lot wider in scope not just focussing on the removal of cameras, however as you point out the membership is pretty small and resources are limited. In some respects the narrow focus on speed cameras is a perfect complement for the equally narrow focus of the speed kills message when applied to road safety as a whole.

I did a search for "road safety" and found this site covering safety through improved road design etc.

http://www.roadsafetyfoundation.com/



which looks good to me, why would Safespeed need to invest time and money in replicating this? Assuming the money was available.

Edit: You might take some cheer from the above Anton re: road repairs

EditEdit: It is a campaign to change things so maybe they should be told not to bother.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

The public on foot and bike are totally suicidal.

More victim-blaming and sweeping prejudice, a cyclist who runs a red light may be suicidal, a motorist who does the same is homicidal. This forum serves as an outlet for people who fantasise about killing cyclists. These posts aren't moderated.

The basis of the evidence is skewed and partial.

I have no sympathy at all for people who break the speed limit, regardless
of whether they judge the speed limit to be set at the wrong level. The
speed is set, and we agree to the limits and all other driving/riding laws
by being on the road in the first place. If you go over the speed limit and
get a fine, then it's tough luck - but more worrying it's tough luck on the
potential RTA victim. So for those who feel it necessary to break the speed
limit, please spare a thought for the innocent you may be involved with.

Ok, here it goes.


Put baldly your argument seems to be that there was a change in the
rate of fall in casualties per km in 1993 and that the only event that
can have caused this was the "speed kills" campaign.
1./ There is no reason to believe that the figures should follow an
exponential decay. However even if it did there might be a hardcore of
incompetent or arrogant drivers who will not be influenced by any safety
campaign. If that is true then you cannot expect the trend to reach zero
at infinity, but rather some other asymptote.
2./ this inflection may be noise.
3./ Many other things have changed since 1993, some irrelevant (price of
cheese, negative equity etc) and some others that may be significant (
number of 4x4s on the road, number of school runs, weather, use of ABS,
fall in number of cyclists, spread of mobile phone use, alcopops,
ecstasy......) To pick on your own hobby horse as the cause is plain silly.

Lets make speeding as unacceptable as drink driving.




Take this:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/fatality.html






What caused the clearly observable change in trend in about 1978 which
resulted in an above average reduction in accident rate? (Your graph 1 (the
DfT stuff, not the meaningless straight lines).

What caused the trend line to return to its 1950 to 1978 rate in about 1992?


Were all cameras removed in 1978 and no-one noticed?


Drawing straight lines on the graphs to justify a contention is not proving
the contention. If you want to analyse the data then please do it properly.
It does require more than a helix 6" ruler and one of those pens with 12
different colours -- not surprisingly.


If you cannot analyse the data but still hate cameras you could try some of
the suggestions that can be found elsewhere -- such as hairspraying your
number plate, adding additional, false plates or blowing the things up. At
least that way you would get out more and not fill the internet with puerile
crap.

Never forget, cameras CANNOT cause accidents. Bad drivers responding
inappropriately to cameras can, but cameras ABSOLUTELY CANNOT cause
accidents.





Your mathematics may be correct (although I dispute the validity of
picking arbitrary trend lines based on the overall change between two
arbitrary years; you have not demonstrated that there is a
statistically significant change since 1993; the data points are
well-distributed and the chances of seeing a 'trend' such as the one
you identify purely by blind chance are all too present. The onus is
on you to show that the trend is not attributable to lady luck if you
wish to use these figures to support a case for change in public
policy).

Any such analysis should anticipate a gradual fall in the year-on-year
percentage change since the eventual outcome of any road safety policy
will be to leave us with a residual level of accidents that reflect
human and technical inadequacy (we will never achieve an accident-free
road network while humans drive, walk and cycle). Each new development
in road safety may reasonably be expected to cause a temporary spike
in this for a few years as their impact is felt and then, over
subsequent years, the rate of change will fall away as there is no new
advance to reduce the figures.


Even if I grant that that the maths is acceptable, the conclusions you
draw from it hold no water.


Your assertion that speed cameras and the speed kills policy are the
only possible cause is at worst ridiculous and at best an assertion
unsupported by any causal evidence. The statement that it must be true
because it is the only reasonable cause is infantile, and your attempt
to hide such a random leap of illogic within a mass of
reasonable-sounding mathematice akin to the defenses of Astrology that
are littered astronomical terms to impress the gullible.


So let me offer you one alternative hypothesis. In 1992 the Ford
Escort was first fitted with an airbag. This happened on a few K reg
models (available Autumn 1993) and became more widespread over
subsequent years (http://www.parkers.co.uk/pricing/used_o ... ?model_i...).
Airbags became widely available in the Vauxhall Astra in 1993
(http://www.parkers.co.uk/pricing/used_o ... ?model_i...).
These 2 cars account for a large percentage of UK sales. This is not
the first introduction of airbags into UK cars, but it is when they
became common.


1993 as a year saw a large percentage reduction in the percentage
change of fatalities per billion vehicle miles (roughly 1% compared to
0.6% in 1991). This reflects the impact of airbags in reducing the
fatalities of drivers. Since then the percentage change of deaths per
billion KM has been dropping away steadily. I put this down to drivers
adapting to the presence of airbags, feeling safer as a result and
driving less safely (there are figures below to support this).


Mr. Smith sold snake oil. Smoke and mirrors, smoke and
mirrors.

Nope. I don't agree.

Have you actually been fined directly for all of these incidents?

You see, despite all the supposed legislation enforcing nightmare that this Government have allegedly become, I've never once been fined (for anything) and I don't consider myself inconvenienced (if anything my council is quite good, touch wood!)

Sorry I must have missed this; when did the TRL admit to the figures being incorrect? I don't remember reading a press release about it?



No I am not arguing that point, you are right. The point is, in my opinion SafeSpeed is no longer a campaign, simply a motoring and political forum (hence why I broke my view of them down into two time periods). Paul was an excellent campaigner and with all due respect to the current operators it died a death with him.



Maybe a way forward would be a collaboration with the above and other road safety initiatives instead of working alone? Maybe it would enable the message of SS be taken more seriously by the people who make the decisions.

I've been driving since 1973 and in those years I've driven more miles than most of you can expect to ever cover and despite the fact that in the 70's we had few luxuries like disc brakes,brake servos , seat belts etc., the roads are actually more "DANGEROUS" now because despite the HSE influence in our day to day life, people are actually less "safety savy" than they wee all those years ago. No one these days seems to understand car mechanics and what actually makes them "work" and because of the dependence on ABS, ESP and the such, we all believe that we are brilliant drivers that can't put a foot wrong. But you are wrong and the best that this government can come up with to put your minds at rest is LOWER SPEED LIMITS, this givess the weaker drivers amongst us the abiility to feel "safe" yet limits the abilities of the "better" drivers. This country has a lot to learn about road safety and will not get any better so long as we cater for the "lessser able" amongst us. We all need to get back to basics and start to learn again.Yes you may say that there were more "casualties in the 70's but safety factors in the cars are responsible for the reductions since then, NOT driver skills.I see on a Hour by Hour basis bad driving skills that would not be tolerated in the 70's but so long as people stick to that 30 MPH limit these days, it is not frowned upon by the authorities because traffic cops are now replaced by "speed cameras" which don't judge driving standards but one's ability to watch a speedo.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I agree that the campaign has changed since Paul left us, this is not, however, a reason to quit, any more than the occasional dissenter showing up and telling us the campaign is worthless (hi Martin, how is first officering treating you, maybe one day eh?). The campaign is still in a state of flux, having been wholly run by one man for most of it's existence. The fact that it has not yet reached it's final incarnation is no reason to abandon all hope.

If it was a dead as implied, then why would you good folks, capable of rational opposition of course, still be here?

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

I have been threatend with fines over bins. I have been taxed £10,500 for moving house. It is the fear of fines, not just being fined. I can go to pick up my wife who has a blue badge and be photographed by a camera and receive a fine in the post that I have to defend for parking within the law.

I might also point out the governments obsession with road pricing, It could be done cheaply at the petrol pumps, but no there is a highly expensive, complicated way, an inefficent way with thousands of cameras, road sensors, satalites, cloned cars, reams of bills and fines... lots of them.

_________________
Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

you have 31 pagesa of misrepresenting everything that was said on a previous thread - including that I claim you can become immortal by reading the highway code!!!!

There was no misrepresentation, and nobody made any such claim about the HC. Here we have a ss supporter taking advantage of ss editorial policy of locking threads that ask awkward questions, and then blatantly lying about what was said.
You invite people here to post comments, but you only let them stay if they agree with you. What are you so terrified of?

just to put the records straight, I'd put myself in that same catagory.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

I don't get that impression, although that is the impression the campaign wants to
give out. I get the impression that the campaigners hated cameras, so they found some
road safety aspects that seemed to support their opinion.

Most people seem to think that cameras are a pest, so it is right to ask the question
"can we be as safe or safer without speed cameras?" I think the campaign attempts to
answer that question, albeit with a lot of bias because they all know that cameras are
a pest.

So that means it could be an anti-speed camera road safety campaign (just like Brake is
a pro-speed camera road safety campaign). Or is could be a staright forward anti-speed
camera campaign. There's no way to tell the sincerity, and some members may be more
sincere than others.

PS: none of that alters the basic fact , though. Speed cameras are a pest, to most people.