Safe Speed Forums

I've just put up an analysis that debunks the published conclusions of the fundamental Australian research study claiming to link casualties to speeding:

http://www.fastandsafe.org/site.aspx/Pages/Facts/KloedenCritique/index

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Alan Wilkinson (at http://www.fastandsafe.org)

Hi Alan

There is another fatal flaw in the Australian research, which I explained in another thread a while back.
In case you didn't see it, here it is again:

Thanks Peter. I haven't bothered looking at the hypothetical scenarios since the base conclusions are so flawed.

In discussions with John Lambert we have identified that there are likely very significant false assumptions in the estimated speed calculations anyway.

They have used a constant for the loss of energy before braking which actually varies substantially with speed and brake effort and another constant for the coefficient of friction which varies hugely with tyres and road surface.

I agree entirely that the quality of peer review in the road safety research industry appears to be utterly pathetic if not completely corrupt.

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Alan Wilkinson (at http://www.fastandsafe.org)

That doesn't really make any difference. What they have done is taken actual accident data and then calculated what the hypothetical impact speed would have been with reduced speeds.
But, as they have kept the starting point the same, their hypothesis is impossible. In short, if the vehicles concerned were travelling at a different speed then they would not have been at the same place at the same time - so any attempt to extrapolate impact speeds - by whatever method or formula - is clearly nonsensical.
At any different speed, either higher or lower, it's a virtual certainty that none of those accidents would have happened. By the law of averages, other accidents would have happened, but probably involving other vehicles - not those particular ones.
If the laws of probability are properly taken into account, the accident risk less than doubles with a doubling of speed. (it would be exactly double with a doubling of speed, if not for reaction time) This is because, although braking distance quadruples with a doubling of speed, it's also true that the probability of being at a particular place at a particular time halves as speed doubles.

Regards
Peter

Stop making excuses for killing people! What is a few minutes in your journey worth for somebodies life? I hate you all, you are all so selfish!

I think you need to read a bit more before you make such rash judgements! Most of the people here are discussing the optimal methods for improving road safety.

Speaking personally, I have given up thousands of hours and thousands of pounds in the interests of re-establishing the road safety policies that actually gave us the safest roads in the World in the first place.

I also happen to believe that bad policy is now killing about 1,200 each year on British roads. So who is it that has blood on their hands?

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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

To use an analogy:

What would you do if you found out that people in a hospital were dying needlessly because they were being given the wrong medicine, that flawed research said that that medicine should work, but that people continued to die, and the hospital's response was to merely increase the dosage of the same medicine?

Well, what would you do?

Regards
Peter

Our safe roads are nothing to be complacent about! If there were as many deaths in any other form of transport, the railways for example, they would not last very long! The fact is that speed is the main contributory factor in nearly 50% of collisions on our roads, therefore by reducing speeds we are combating at least that number of collisions on our roads!

As for the analogy (from the greek analogos meaning proportionate!):

I see no connection between a medicine that kills people, and reduction of speed which is known to reduce the chance of a person dying in a collision! Are you claiming that by driving slower you are more likely to kill somebody in a collision?!

Your figure is MILES out. Road accidents caused or contributed to by "normal motorists" exceeding a speed limit are likely to be around 1%. See this page:

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

I'd be very pleased to examine any reference source you might like to quote.



If the means of speed reduction in itself is distracting it is highly likely that the average speed of impacts will rise. So yes.

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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

Who said anything about complacency?
I would venture that if the railways carried a similar volume of people and goods traffic, the fatality rate would also be similar.
Also, more people are killed annually in accidents in their own homes than on the roads. What would you suggest the authorities do about that?



Do you really believe everything you're told? 'Facts' like that one come from the kind of dodgy research which this thread is all about.



What a clever person you are!



What I'm saying is that the medicine is not working. It may not be killing people, but it's not curing them either.
I'm not claiming that you're more likely to kill someone by driving slower but, seeing you mention it, it is possible for that to happen if, by reducing speeds, you increase the potential for collisions to happen.
For example, if you had strictly-enforced 20mph speed limits througout all residential areas then it's likely that parents would feel safe in letting their little tots run willy-nilly around the streets unsupervised.
1000 collisions which kill 10% of people are going to kill more than 100 collisions which kill 50% of people.

Regards
Peter

So Potters Bar, Clacton, Paddington ... and the rest never happened? It is more down to luck than anything else that we have not seen more of these - given the overall neglected state of our rail network.

Speed is not the main contributory factor for collisions on the roads. My cousin was not killed by a speeding articulated truck: it was travelling at a slow speed when it ploughed through central reservation and hit him full impact head-on.

My wife may have been hit by car travelling at 80mph (fully recovered and expecting our fifth child ca Xmas - ) - but the man was taken fatally ill and hit the throttle hard.

Know of countless incoming wounded into A&E (am medico - and have cousin - in law who works A&E in London - and brother who works A&E in Stirling) - they tell me that many deaths/serious injuries come in from low speed impact collisions - in fact - these seem on the rise - and we suspect there was no application of COAST in these. - If there were - there would have been slow down and avoidance at hazard perception level! In other words - it is ability to recognise the impending hazard and adjust driving to counter this which is lacking.

And of course - road safety is not just a matter for drivers: pedestrians and cyclists are equally responsible for their safety when using our roadways - COAST applies just as much to them as it does to a driver of whatever standard.


( High speed collisions tend to have illegals in blood stream ).




Actually there is a medication which has been found to be flawed and one of the big five pharmaceuticals is facing lawsuit over it. It has since been withdrawn - but only after needless deaths!


Incidentally, pedestrians, in particular appear to be misjudging cars' approach at slower speeds - and not unknown for them to dither and then step off in front of the slow moving car. Impact at slow speed can actually do just as much damage to a vital organ - and death can occur later on if not immediately.

If you encourage people to believe that if car travelling slowly will not kill them - they could start taking unnecessary chances - which can lead to more deaths - especially if impact hits at vital organ or head level



Then again - they could contract MRSA (NOT IN MY HOSPITALS!) and die.


But whole safety issue revolves around application of COAST. Apply this - and safest speed for road conditions is almost invariably chosen!

Either you're deliberately on a wind up, or you've just taken Government statistics at face value with no thought.

The point being made is that the over reliance on enforcement of minor speed limit transgressions is doing nothing to make our roads safer. The people more likely to be involved in collisions (drugged, drunk, unlicenced, stolen etc) will not be caught by speed cameras. The MOST DANGEROUS elements on our roads can carry on driving with complete impunity. Rather than admitting this, the people running the show are sticking their heads in the sand and deciding that we need yet more cameras. This state of affairs is being compounded by a marked reduction in traffic police, who ARE able to detect these type of offences. All that the current policy is doing is victimising a vast majority of people who are driving perfectly safely, albeit marginally above a posted limit. The powers that be now have such a vested (political and financial) interest in speed cameras that they are being blinded to the truth. They are operating from a faith based position rather than using logic. They can crow about 40% reductions all they want, but scratch the surface of their "proof" and you get a very different story. A quick analysis of the figures from my local camera partnership (Herts) shows a 35% reduction in collisions in the time between 14 fixed cameras were approved to when they were actually installed. If a 35% reduction can occur quite naturally, how can I then take ANY of their statistics at face value? Quite frankly, I don't believe a word they say.

Wake up and look at the figures with a critical eye. Cameras are not saving 100 lives a year (or 900, if you're Tony Blair) - if they were we'd be seeing a considerable reduction in fatalities, not an increase. This obsession with speed is blinding people from the real problems, whilst conveniently coining in cash for HM Gov and furthering the careers of various people.

I find it worrying that despite much better vehicle design and engineering, fatal accidents are on the up. It suggests to me that there is a serious flaw with current safety policy when MORE people are being killed despite vehicles being much safer than even five years ago. Something is wrong, but these people are being too pig headed to acknowledge the problem.

As for slowing down yet having more accidents - entirely possible if by reducing vehicle speed you also reduce driver attention (looking for cameras instead of hazards for example). Driver A may well be travelling slower than driver B, but if he isn't paying attention to the road he's still going to have a crash. In fact, given that he wasn't paying attention, he very likely would've reacted later than driver B, so he'll be travelling just as fast, if not faster when he arrives at the scene of the accident, despite being invisible to their cameras.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that all opponents of speed cameras are somehow "pro-speeding" or anti road safety, as nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the people making the loudest noises against camera enforcement are MORE concerned about road safety. They can see that cameras aren't working and want an end to the lies and spin and a return to the policies that WERE WORKING before cameras came along.

Nice to meet you too.
You may not have noticed, but regular posters here are highly critical of the lousy driving standards that can be seen daily on our roads. Making accusations that we are excusing road deaths and then declaring your hatred suggests that you haven't taken the time to read the info on the site or the posts. That, or you simply didn't understand. I suppose there's also an outside chance that you've just got an axe to grind and don't give a damn who you do it on.
Still, on the plus side, it's refreshing to see a sniper somewhere other than the 'anonymous' forum for a change.
That's quite incredible! For years we've been told that it's a third, well 30%, well at least it's 30% if you assume that the 7% that really was identified as "excessive speed" was all speed over the limit and then add a bunch of other factors to it . It's ironic that the old 1/3 stat seems to be gradually dropping out of sight just as Andonandonandon suddenly pops up with this "nearly 50%" figure.
Okay Anon. Try this out for size - by your reckoning the current policy is combating about half of road accidents. But after years of this the figures still aren't getting any better. Hasn't it crossed your mind that this might be because they shooting at the wrong target?
Almost all accidents are preventable (they're really negligents, not accidents) and almost all come down to some type of bad driving. Excessive speed is only one of dozens of different forms of road use (for a full list read the Highway Code - it's amazing how many things are not sensible out on the roads, and you don't even need to be driving for some of them). It's also quite possible to be driving at an excessive speed below the limit and therefore out of the reach of the cameras. IMO only a carrot and stick approach is going to do much long term good. The carrot should be incentives for drivers to improve (and others to behave more responsibly too), and the stick should be vast numbers of plods, preferably about half in unmarked cars, to weed out those who really shouldn't be on the road. The trouble is it would take time for improved driver training to kick in, and it would also take a few years before enough fresh faced young plodlets can be trained up to replace the huge numbers we've lost. The appeal of cameras is that of a quick-fix solution, and since drivers themselves could be made to pay for them it would also be cheap. Well, you get what you pay for in life. The casualty figures themselves show that the quick-fix solution has achieved little more in over a decade apart from a deteriorating relationship between police and public.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

If we think instead in terms of "safety culture" and quality of information we certainly don't have to wait years. We can get very quick effects with TV advertising or documentaries about how not to crash.

Is that improved driver training? I think it is, but clearly not in the conventional sense.

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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 would first like to say that I'm a nice geezer who doesn't believe any of you are necessarily bad people (but perhaps misguided ).

I can tell you quite reliably that near 50% of accidents really do have the main factor as being excessive speed! Warwickshire's Casualty Reduction Partnership may have some news for you! I can also tell you that the proportionate fatality rate on the railways is a whole lot smaller than that of on the roads, it also happens to be considerably more economically viable for goods to be transported by train than by road, I can go into the physics if you so wish? It is unfortunate that the neglect by a certain government has lead to the decline in the railways!

I am sorry to hear of any death on the road, but the simple fact is that excessive speed really is the biggest contributory factor in road deaths!

There has in fact been a a 14% reduction in people killed or seriously injured in the last 3 years (33% for children )! I would also like to agree that unmarked police cars would be a splendid idea, unfortunaltely they have been greatly reduced due to the unpopularity from the motorists!

I will say that there are far more dangerous actions you can take on the roads, like drink driving, but if you look at this then you will find such actions do carry much larger penalties! You may think the law is an ass, but the law is law.

Speed is a factor in EVERY road crash. You can't have a crash at zero relative speed.

Excessive speed is a completely meaningless subjective classification. Therefore statistics based on it are also meaningless since the source data is useless. So is anything you say about it "quite reliably".

Actual before and after braking crash speeds would be useful. So would measures of the coefficient of friction of the road surface at the crash site (and that is a pre-requisite for a half-decent estimate of the before-braking speed.

So also would be visibility measures that could measure how much time drivers had in which to take preventative actions.

But no, "speed kills" freaks don't want to think seriously about accident prevention - they just want to find someone to blame because then they can stop thinking and put their mouth into gear.

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Alan Wilkinson (at http://www.fastandsafe.org)

What? Like this:



From:

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

PLEASE don't tell me their policies have further increased the proportion of excessive speed accidents...

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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

If you believe a Pratship

Can tell you quite reliably that all members of this family travel to Cambs for anniversary bash on same day each year.

This year we looked at their web site for "mobile speed traps" . Indeed those "nice geezers" told us where they were intending to spring the traps - A14 and A141. They claimed that 188 people had died on this very day in years 2000-2003. We have driven on those very roads on that particular date every year since 1985. Never been held up in accident, seen accident, nor have any of the medics based in Cambs been recalled to deal with emergencies on that scale. So much for their statistics and "their news for us". Will not deny that A14 has accidents - but this road - bad layout and prone to fog - has seen more accidents since they placed scams every mile! Not a resounding success - see lots of bunching as drivers brake to 60mph (road is 70mph - dual carriageway NSL).

Cumbria and Lancs both claim "huge reductions" Oh! Yeah! Right!

Tell that to my colleagues in A&E - they have not noticed this. In fact - they are now receiving MORE than ever - and find more actually test positive for illegal substance than previously.

They also hear from those actually involved that collisions occurred from poor observation, anticipation. dodgy vehicle, pedestrian, & cyclist error, and of course - they get the trolley loads of joy riders and police invilved in pursuits!

So - your reliable information is not that reliable - is it!

Then they hear the excuses "not speeding - I know I checked my speedo!"



We have enough accidents based on relatively low volume of traffic on rail tracks. Would accidents increase with more trains?

And would have thought "economies of scale" accounts for the viability rather than physics.

Given the price I recently paid for a train ticket - car would have been cheaper, more comfortable and faster - train got held up by "wrong kind of rain!"



At the scam sites - which are fleece spots which never saw the number of accidents they claimed in first place and which have since regressed to the mean.

In the meantime - deaths and injuries from RTACs have increased overall - and I do know this for fact actually - as know requisitions from the blood bank side of my job and conversations with colleagues.

Sadly - many children are still being involved in pedestrian accidents - may have dropped at the dodgy fleece spot - but no so away from them. In fact most accidents involving kiddies occur on residential roads.



DD does carry stiffer penalty - but what are chances of them getting caught? Oh sorry Forgot ..... PC Gatso detects this!

Scameras have led to reduced trafpol - these blokes used to catch really dangerous twazaks, even managed to stop someone driving erratically through illness or fatigue (though the Panda Pretzel failed to stop the bloke who hit my wife before he reached the motorway! ). Heck - they even managed to catch "Mr Big" just before or after the armed robbery!

It is a flawed policy and sooner we get back to proper policing - the better!

I trust no statistics - especially government ones. Know what gives in NHS - and believe me - the stats are PHONY!

Could go on at tangent about lies over beds, waiting lists - and the absolute truth - which is not at all the same as the government's version.

Same would apply to all government activities - war in Iraq, Hutton, buckets of whitewash?

So - would if scammers told me my Moggie Thou was black saloon version - would have to check if with my own eyes!

right off subject, but as it was just yesterday. I visited a friend of mine in hospital, heart attack, he has been waiting at the hospital for over 5 weeks, to go to another hospital for a one hour operation that requires an overnight stay.

he is as fit as a fiddle, well almost, but if he goes home, he looses his place in the que. He must stay there at our cost and of course at his cost to his work

thats fiveweeks of using a hospital bed, he says about 7o percent of the ward are waiting to be shifted from our huge regional hospital which it seems can do very little, to a london hospital which can do the swift jobie required..

so much for statistics. so much for the billions going in.. so much i give up !
rgds
bill

Yeah, okay. You hate us all because we're selfish, but don't think we're necessarily bad.
Oh c'mon. Even the government aren't saying it's remotely near 50%. Their current claim is that the speed is a factor in about 13% of crashes and cameras save 100 lives (or about 1 life per fifty cameras). Even if they're right, it's hardly impressive stuff. It doesn't lend much support to your "near 50%" claim either.
I'd agree that the railways are safer (though I find them thoroughly unpleasant to use, and overpriced to boot). Air travel is safer either, but it's of little relevance to road safety unless it were possible to take the factors that produce the safety and use them on the road. Some might cross over, but many won't.
Ah, KSI again, the press release equivalent of alchemy. Whoever thought of KSI must have got a medal from the DfT for coming up with a way of turning bad news into good. If the K bit goes down, you can just claim a success for reducing deaths. If the K bit goes up, but SIs have gone down by a larger amount you claim a reduction for KSI. Heads you win, tails you win. What KSI figures mask is that the actual number of people dying each year is going up. Okay, the rate of deaths by distance has fallen a little, but not as much as it used to in the pre-scamera days. For all we know that slight reduction could be entirely due to another reason, such as in car active safety.
I reckon the reduction is more about overheads than popularity. Cameras are unpopular, but the response has been to put up more of the damn things and use some dodgy survey questions to try and get a veneer of support. Anyway, a lot depends on how unmarked cars are used. Your average Joe/Josephine Motorist, having just been carved up by a nutter at high speed, would probably have a little smile if they came across the same car pulled up a mile down the road with an unmarked car parked behind it. A touch of that schadenfreudythingy (MadMog, please ask SWMBO how to spell that for me ). If unmarked cars were to be used the same way cameras have been then they'll be about as popular. But if they are used to target genuine bad driving then sensible drivers will rarely get tugged, and will probably become supportive.
Penalties for more serious offences have no relevance unless the offenders are likely to be caught, and if the law is an ass it won't be respected. For example, and this is just as a thought experiment, what if the law prohibited singing out of tune in the shower? Well, I'd be doing life as a persistent offender apart from the fact that our imaginary law is practically impossible to enforce. So whatever the penalties I have little to worry about when commiting musical genocide in the morning. But the law is the law, even if the law is an ass, right? Well, if we no longer question a law which makes no sense or is being misused, then it stops being of any benefit to us and helps reduce respect for the law in general.
Now, I'm not saying that it makes no sense to have speed lmits, but to an extent the ones we have are archaic and badly need to be brought up to date. In addition speed limits are being misused where limits are being reduced inappropriately, which may cause some drivers to ignore not only the daft limits but the sensibly set ones as well. That's hardly going to make our roads safer, is it? Bottom line, if the law is an ass it must be revised, or at least quietly ignored. If it's okay but being enforced in such a way that it's in danger of becoming counter productive, then we're not much better off.

PS for Mad Moggie - btw, congratulations to you and WildCat. Normally I'd ask if you're hoping for a boy or a girl, but perhaps it should be petrohead or diesel driver? Ah... the pitterpatter of tiny tappets... or something.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein