Safe Speed Forums

Hi,

We need to take some action on this whole Speed debate. I am therefore prepared to offer some cash to an independent body (University) who will offer UNBIASED corroborations based on statistics we have available. I

The SafeSpeed and Government views are affected by too many variables to be trustworthy (in my opinion) so we need someone who has neutral interest to produce a report.

Due to my passion for this subject and my desire to improve Road Safety, I am (reluctantly) prepared to put in up to £10,000 of my own money to fund this study. I know a few contacts who may be interested, but hypotheses need to be generated so I can supply a brief.

Well I can't say we've always agreed on everything (ahem!) but anyone who is prepared to put that much of his own money up to try and find something out objectively, certainly deserves respect!

I used to work at Manchester Metropolitan University if that interests you as a potential bidder. I doubt this would be appropriate for the Mechanical Engineering department (where I used to work) but I still have a few contacts round the place if that would be of any use!

As for the hypotheses, I'll have a think and I'm sure everyone else will and we'll see if we can put something together.

I'm very impressed by your committment.

I wish I could think of a research body likely to be unbiased.

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

I had 'neutral interest' when I started. It was the discovery of the terrible safety impact of bad policy that made me give up work 3.5 years ago at considerable personal cost.

There's no 'vested interest' here.

£10K is good, and might 'seed' a study, but such a study is unlikely to be able to examine systematic effects (too big / too complex for the budget).

One might have a stab at a 'what is road safety' type dissertation...

Or any other ideas?

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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

Indeed, I think there'd need to be about £80-100k to generate something worthwhile. I'll see what I can come up with, it won't be anything like that amount though.

The other issue is staff quality and and it's not going to be cheap. There's plenty of available postgraduates / research associates at local Universities, but the management is going to be an issue. I'd want it overseen and managed by someone of the calibre of Linda Mountain (who incidentally I would dismiss for this task due to possible bias).

I suppose the 'Stone Report' approach could be developed / extended. (advocates and impartial adjuicator). The Stone report needed one more layer of iteration to arrive at systematic conclusions. Have you seen that stuff?

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

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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'd advise finding someone with a strong social issues and statistics background (not me I hasten to add!!!!) who has NOT addressed transport issues before - you would need someone who could handle both quantitative and qualitative research. Most researchers in transport issues appear to be tainted to some extent by their funding "cash cows".

Such a report will not yield anything truly conclusive. It’s correct to say that there are many variables, itself not a problem but there has never been a survey to quantitively characterise some of the more critical ones – the presence of other safety measures applied at camera sites. Statistics are not available for determination of these other coefficients; we all know that changing multiples variables makes simple low order equations impossible to solve; this is cunning obfuscation.

Another problem is that proper analysis is highly interdisciplinary. Psychology, statistics and expert driving are the minimum overlapping skill sets (with system engineering being a strong influence, I suppose, when trying to determine the factors that drive the existing system).

It's because of these overlaps that I've been able to run rings around DfT claims.

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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

Bump.

What's happening with this?

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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

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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