Safe Speed Forums

I was bored and thought I would walk-through these numbers to see just how disproportionate our speed camera policy is.


We know that 3500 die annually in a road accident in the UK.

It is claimed that speed is the cause of 1/3 of all fatalities, but we know that figure to be exaggerated and the term ‘speed’ is open to interpretation. Let’s assume exceeding the speed limit accounts for 1/10 of all fatalities (a huge over-estimate but it will prove my point). This means that 350 people die annually due to exceeding the speed limit (over estimation).

There are 43 camera partnerships, some with over 100 staff. Assuming an average of 50 staff per partnership (I can’t find any concrete numbers), that would suggest a national total of 2150 camera partnership staff (excluding officers operating Lidar equipment).


There are over 6000 suicides annually in the UK (source: Samaritans).
For proportional effort to be allocated there would be:

6000/350 * 2150 =
37000 staff working to prevent suicides - the best we have is a charity.


There are 126800 deaths annually in the UK from to cancer
(http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=915)
For proportional effort to be allocated there would be:

126800/350 * 2150 =
780000 staff working to prevent cancer - that’s 1 in 30 of our employed population working to prevent cancer (separate from caring for sufferers).


Makes you think!

only that there's no windfall to be made from stopping suicides or preventing cancer (wonder drugs aside).

bet you can come up with a lot more numbers in other fields
such as crimes actually solved ( leaving out the easy ones :-motoring so called offences )

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Brian of Plymouth
When will the government realise , that to err is only human, to be perfect is to be GOD.

Its a good job my girlfriend doesnt read this forum, she has killed for less. She spends every day of the week preventing suicides and works in the NHS as a pyshciatric nurse.

Talking of proportions, what about other motoring offences like drink driving?

As safespeed has mentioned before, a small minority drive a motor vehicle while drunk, but a very large proportion of crashes involve drunk drivers. Drunk drivers are over-represented in accidents.

Why is it then, that (almost) all enforcement focuses on speed?

When was the last time anyone's intoxication status was measured? Conversely, how many times per day is speed measured?

I think this highlights the stupidity of the situation.

Of course, drink drivers cost money to prosecute and enforcement requires something called a police officer, not a robotic , automated roadside camera.

How many of those suicides occur as a result of people losing everything because of driving bans imposed as a result of accumulated "Scamra attacks"?

I wonder if anybody bothers to keep a record?

Dusty

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

And speeding drivers are amazingly (i.e. hugely) under-represented in accidents. It's a very compelling argument...

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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