Safe Speed Forums

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/repor ... 0624.shtml

Says:

An independent report commissioned by the BBC has made serious criticisms of the government's speed camera policy.

The report says that although cameras do save lives, the claims for cameras in the UK might have been exaggerated. It says more lives could be saved if cameras were hidden, not painted yellow.

It says cameras should not be predominantly concentrated on proven accident blackspots because it means more people will be killed on dangerous stretches of road which don't yet qualify for a camera because there have not been enough accidents recently.

The report was commissioned by the Today Programme / the BBC from Mervyn Stone, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at University College London.

He took evidence over a two-month period from anti-camera campaigner Paul Smith and pro-camera campaigner Robert Gifford. He cross-examined them both in a tribunal.

His report criticises the way Britain?s statistics on cameras have been collected and analysed. He says when the camera programme was set up it should have been done as a scientific experiment so the benefits could be properly measured.

This failure means that the data from speed cameras has been sub-standard. That may have led independent analysts brought in to review government figures to take a somewhat optimistic view of the cameras? success.

Professor Stone says that better-conducted studies from Wales, Norway and New Zealand clearly show that cameras do save many lives. But they also show that visible cameras only slow cameras down for a few hundred metres, and that hidden cameras are more effective.

The implication, he says, is that the government should put rows of cameras on dangerous roads, or abandon the policy of painting cameras yellow. He criticises the government's decision to agree to road lobby demands to place 85% of cameras on sites where at least four people have been killed or seriously hurt in the past three years. This, he says, is illogical and may be costing lives.

It means some roads got a speed camera because of crashes not definitely associated with speed, while other highly dangerous roads won't qualify for a camera until enough people get killed.

The government said it had no plans to stop painting cameras yellow. It said the recent 3-year review of camera statistics was conducted by independent academics and consultants who reject the implication that their figures are distorted.
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Would anyone who has read the Stone Report please comment on this BBC piece?

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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

I've only quickly read the report once, but I certainly didn't come away with the impression that the BBC article gives.

From my reading of the original report, the impression I got was that by and large he felt the case for cameras was at best unproven, at worst non-existent, that any benefit at camera sites may well be more than offset by disbenefits elsewhere, and that huge conflicts of interest at the highest levels had led to false claims being perpetuated.

I will have to read it more carefully and see if I were mistaken. In particular to see if I can find the bits that would lead to the resounding support for "more cameras better hidden" that the BBC article appears to have extrapolated!

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Paul,

First of all, I was very impressed by your well-written & researched work and think you deserve a big "well done".

JT beat me to it, but I agree with his post above, and would like to reiterate his point about "offsets by disbenefits". I think that this is a crucial point, and find it strange that "Professor Stone says that better-conducted studies from Wales, Norway and New Zealand clearly show that cameras do save many lives" while saying in his report that the "offsets by disbenefits" (as JT calls them) have not been quantified.

Have the roads been getting safer in the camera decade?

Interesting that the BBC has Prof. Stone apparently drawing the same conclusions as a certain R Brunstrom. Something smells extremely fishy here....

From what I've read, he said nothing of the sort? He certainly mentions the use of random and hidden traps, but the BBC has handily dropped his comment regarding the monitoring of such traps "by a reconstituted traffic-police force that could exercise some discretion in how it is applied."

Get speed enforcement back in the hands of traffic police, de-politicise it and get rid of the glaring conflict of interests that the SCPs represent. Funded by fines yet trying to promote speed limit obedience, thus no fines...how can that possibly work, ever?

Found this comment interesting....

"On the positive side, there is a sizeable majority of the
population, even of drivers, who are well-disposed to the use of such things as safety cameras even when allowance
is made for the disgraceful positive bias in the questionnaire by which DfT ascertains that opinion

Sorry cannot help facetious remark on how this would affect population figures!

OK per the report "Benefit ....dramatic reduction in overall fatalities of recorded accidents on humped roads - especially children"

So - recorded accidents must mean child v car!

If only they knew just how many kiddies are admitted due to childrennd practising wheelies over these humps .... stitches, broken limbs, concussion....

"Wide spread humping" - What about transporting broken backs and necks to hospital? And lifesaving equipment in ambulances - very sensitive to sudden shock movements as cause by humps!

Article suggested use of paramedic on motorbike. Well fine - for slight injuries - but you still have to send proper ambulance for medium to serious cases - and this means extra costs to an already stretched NHS ambulance service! Not to mention compromising response times!


As for forests of scameras - we already have those in parts of LanCASH£re - and they do not seem to be working that well. Blackpool prom needs proper police presence to prevent drunken j-walkers ambling in front of cars, pony and traps and the trams!

Hiding scameras? Well - that will lead to even more panic braking at last minute than we have already! And will people really understand why their driving was so dangerous? Moreover, given current practices - what makes them think we will trust "covert" scamming any more than "overt" scamming! And mobiles are not exactly overt -are they? And they will place the scams at fleece spots all the more this way!

As I read the report - it seems pretty inconclusive that the scams do as authorities claim - there is insufficient data per final paragraphs on pages 23-24. There is admisssion to some extent that polls are skewed - and this is evidenced by the actual questions posed and withdrawn.

I would still argue that compulsory assessments (not outright re-tests) is one way forward on basis that deeper understanding of driving, training in enhanced observation skills and re-inforced hazard perception skills is way forward. Smiley Sids, backed by speed cam and more trafpols too!

Over-reliance on speed camera is not road to safety. It is unable to cop the really dangerous - and there is more proof of this than the scams' ability to "save lives"