Safe Speed Forums

Hi, I would be grateful if you could reply to the following:

1. Why do camera partnerships claim success when cameras are placed on roads with 'freak' numbers of accidents that would have reduced anyway even if you'd have placed a waving gnome at the site?

This is not true. We always use casualty figures that cover at least a three year period. I assume you refer to the ABD point about regression to the mean. Any statistician will tell you that this only applies to blips in statistics. We never work on blips.

2. Why, when quoting casualty figures, is the long term trend ignored in favour of a 'spike' drop (example 2003-2004, yet if you look a bit further back and compare the overall trend, it is nothing to write home about and we would have achieved a much better level without interference).

Casualty figures are reducing steadily across the board and we are on target to meet government targets.

3. Why are speed limits in NSL areas being reduced to ridiculous levels? Is this done to deliberately create a speeding problem which would cause the introduction of a mobile or fixed site?

Local authorities take great care to set appropriate speed limits.

4. Why are deaths increasing at literally hundreds of camera sites around the country?

The independent three year report showed a decrease in casualties at camera sites. At our own sites last year the number of people killed or seriously injured reduced by 62% and the number of collisions in which people were injured fell by 35%.

5. Why do you and the government promote the message "speed kills" when the roads with the highest speeds have the lowest number of fatalities and serious injury accidents? (i.e motorways)

Speed limits reflect the safe maximum speeds for specific roads. Motorways are relatively safe because of their design - no junctions, crash barriers etc.

6. Why are countries which don't have the "speed kills" message as a keystone of road safety policy performing better than the UK when it comes to reducing casualties on our roads? (Germany and Italy are two great examples). Why are these countries maintaining a solid downward trend in the KSI / General accident stats without a

I have never met a road safety professional from this country or abroad who would not agree that speed kills. That is why everywhere has speed limits which are enforced.

7. Why have we absolved all responsibility for pedestrian road safety from pedestrians themselves. I quote an example from Cambridgeshire Partnership who have a game on their website which questions a treatment option for a road which has children playing chicken with traffic? The suggested answer is to install a Gatso! This really makes my blood boil.

We always would encourage pedestrians to take responsibility for their own safety. Young children should be supervised by adults. The local authority road safety officers invest a tremendous amount of energy into educating youngsters and parents on this topic.

There is absolutely nothing about pedestrian education, green cross code, safe crossing points, correct kerb discipline - or at the bottom line, parental responsibility (or in this case - downright criminal irresponsibility)/

8. Why have you claimed success purely due to enforcement in 2004 - when in 2002 and 2003 where you had the same policy, you performed extremely poorly - 96 deaths in 2002, 108 deaths in 2003. I note most of your reduction is in motorcyclists, probably due to the extremely poor summer last year - yet when questioned about the high number of motorcycle fatalities in 2003 you stated that "Motorcyclists are not our responsibility".

The partnership is only a small part of a much wider road safety initiative. We have never claimed to reduce casualties away from our routes or that are not speed related. I am not aware of any statement saying motorcyclists are not our responsibility.


PS I have read all the propaganda statements on most camera partnership websites (which can safely be discredited with a bit of background research - the most irritating one being the "Speed is responsible for 1/3 of all accidents" statement which is a blatant lie.

The lie is with the anti camera groups who misuse statistics. The consensus - from the Department for Transport, the Transport Research Laboratory, the police and road safety professionals - is that speed is a major factor in road accidents. This is backed up by anecdotal evidence from roads police and reflected in public concern. Recent research by NOP showed that a cross section of the UK public put speeding and drink driving as their two major concerns that the government should be addressing.

Regards

Julian Hewitt

I knew this was from Julian Hewitt well before I got to his signature at the bottom.

I love, for example, the very last point. You ask about the one third lie and his answer doesn't mention it and only refers to "major factor" and "anecdotal evidence". He also seeks to equate drink driving with speeding.

A real classic.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I notice he makes no mention of the collisions that have occured where no injuries were sustained.

There is a site on the A3 (3 lanes wide, ex NSL) at Tolworth which has camera's on both carriageways. Before these "safety devices" were erected, there was sweet FA in the way of accidents.
Since the camera's have been there though, there is at least one accident per month which will involve several cars minimum that have all piled in to each other "domino effect" style thanks to panic braking being caused by the camera being spotted at the last minute.

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

How does this square up with his own words here:

http://www.iowtoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2. ... eID=987824



So when deaths go up, it's motorcyclists - apparently not his problem - but when they go down it's because of cameras. Where he says fatalities reduced to 63 this is highly misleading, as they were at about 60 in 2001 when these bastards started up.

I have since sent him a reply asking further questions, particularly with regard to the points he deliberately avoided. I have not received a response yet.

Julian Hewitt wrote: Motorways are relatively safe because of their design - no junctions, crash barriers etc.

So crash barriers and junctions are the cause of most accidents in built-up areas?....Whos arse has his head been up for the last 50 years


Regards


Andrew

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It's a scam........or possibly a scamola


Homer Simpson

I'm sorry, but where on earth did you get the information from that there were "sweet FA in the way of accidents"? The speed limit on that stretch of the A3 was reduced because there were very frequent accidents - I know because I used to drive to work along there and was frequently stuck in a traffic jam caused by an accident. Now, I will admit that if you are referring to a period between the speed limit reduction and the cameras being installed, I couldn't say I remember the exact dates on which each of those events occurred, but I would hazard a guess that without enforcement, the reduction in speed limit would have had little impact on driver behaviour, and the accident rate would have been similar to the high level when it was NSL.

I refer you to the information lower down on this page:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-of ... 212-36.htm

For example:
"On 18 January 1997, a Sainsbury's lorry left the main carriageway, crossed the service road and finally crashed into 210 Tolworth rise south. Before this debate, I gave the Minister a copy of a photograph of that dreadful incident. As the verge at that site is sloped and has absolutely no safety barrier, the vehicle left the carriageway and became airborne. It crashed into a house, but caused £135,000 in damage and destruction to two houses. Fortunately, no one was hurt."

Don't they ****!

Look at this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wilt ... 678587.stm

"Speed cameras on a section of the M4 in Wiltshire are being credited with reducing the number of crashes where someone is killed or injured by 64%."

They've been there, what, two months? I know that isn't Hampshire, but the question was about partnerships in general.

It depends how they use the statistics from the 3 year period. If they simply average them, then a blip will still be a blip, just a smaller blip. What they would need to do is to require the statistics to be consistent for each of those three years. Always discarding the worst year of the three would be one way to discard statistical outliers, for example, but if the remaining two years still differ significantly from each other, I would argue that it is difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from the data, and you need to look further back if possible, or wait more years so that more data can be gathered. Once a treatment is applied to a section of road, you lose the possibility of gathering any more reference data for comparison with the post-treatment data.

Consensus? Something's either true or it's not. Just because the majority of a particular group reportedly say something is true doesn't make it so.
In this case, it's patently false. Speed doesn't even come into the frame. If someone drives in such a fashion that their accident risk is significantly affected by their speed, then they've lost the plot - and, even then, the accident can be squarely blamed on their bad driving, of which their speed is merely a symptom.



Backed up by anecdotal evidence?
And the public are now road safety experts, are they?
How much more does he have to scrape the barrel?

Cheers
Peter

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

Oh yes, anecdotal evidence. Don't even get me started on how useless and misleading it is.

"I had a cold, so I tried dropping a brick on my foot. My cold got better, so dropping a brick on your foot is an effective cure."

I think he meant that are no junctions with crossing traffic and crash barriers are installed as standard.

Gareth

OK, so how come we're only allowed to go 10mph faster on motorways then?

Cheers
Peter

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