Safe Speed Forums

I find these results most alarming, as they suggest that they save lives.

We saw a 2% increase in deaths on our roads.

This is despite our vehicles being the safest they have ever been.

NCAP crash test, rarely see vehicles achieve a 5 star rating which is now starting to become the normal result for the majority of car makers.

If it had not been for this massive leap forward in vehicle safety, i believe we would of seen a massive leap in road deaths since Traffic police have been removed from our roads.

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Steve

Or could it be that in reality the standard of driving is very poor and that drivers have an over-blown opinion on just how safe and good a driver they really are?

Depends on how you define "very poor". Certainly driving standards could and should be better than they are, and I'm inclined to agree that in spite of supposedly tougher testing standards are declining. But in itself that suggests that the current approach is at best insufficient and at worst misdirected. If bad driving is the problem then that should be the priority. Instead the main focus is on speeding, and I suspect that the reason for this is it's a damn sight easier. Trouble is easy doesn't always mean effective.

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

I believe the following statement to be true:

"There is no research which identifies a valid mechanism by which the use of speed cameras, or other speed-limit enforcement, translates to a significant reduction in road casualty figures."

Does anyone know differently?

Regards
Peter

I'd have to say:

"There is no valid research which identifies a mechanism by which the use of speed cameras, or other speed-limit enforcement, translates to a significant reduction in road casualty figures."

The main plank of invalid research is TRL421 and TRL511. See:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/trl421.html and
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/trl.html

Professor Mervyn Stone said: A second strand of Mr Smith's case rests on his questioning, verging on the censorious, of the propriety of attributing causality to the role of speed in empirically established relationships between speed-based measures (such as its mean and coefficient of variation) and accident numbers. In this, I think he has a valid point. But it is one whose proper place is in the scientific discourse that organisations such as TRL Ltd should now be willing to entertain.

So that's TRL421 and TRL511 firmly in the bin then.

Beyond this we have the false assumption that: "the faster you are going the harder you crash".

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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 agree that those two TRL reports are invalid, but for different reasons. They both attempt, by the dubious use of statistical methods, to establish a correlation between speed and accident numbers, and to imply causation.
But, as far as I recall, neither of them attempt to establish any mechanism - although they do allude to mechanism from other research, such as the infamous Kloeden et al papers.
These do attempt to establish mechanism, but their false assumptions render this completely invalid.

So I stand by my version.

Regards
Peter

Causation isn't implied - it's wilfully falsely assumed.

And I'd rate the statistical method as fraudulent rather than dubious.

I'm actually really angry about TRL421 and TRL511. How dare the TRL (of all organisations) undermine UK road safety with wilfully false "scientific research"?



Don't you rate Kloeden as invalid? (not that I consider the positioning of the word "valid" as worth an 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