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Steve
PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 09:30 
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thenewspaper.com

thenewspaper.com wrote:
After a year of 70 MPH speed limits, deaths are down in Iowa and average speeds are up just 1.6 MPH.

Following last year's raising of the Iowa's maximum speed limit from 65 to 70 MPH, the number of road fatalities in the state has fallen. Traffic deaths for 2006 are estimated to be 440 -- equal to the number of deaths twenty years ago. Last year, the number of deaths stood higher at 450.

Raising the speed limit had a negligible effect on the average speed of motorists on Iowa's rural interstates. A comparison of speeds from three months before the limit change (April-June 2005) to three months after (July-September 2006) shows an increase of only 1.6 MPH.

Despite the good news, the Iowa State Patrol will continue to issue expensive speeding tickets. From July 2005 to July 2006, the force issued 27,000 speeding citations generating up to $3 million in revenue.

"One of the things that you are going to be seeing is more use of unmarked cars," Department of Public Safety spokesman Jim Saunders told the Des Moines Register.

Is this the pirates > global warming fallacy again?
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mpaton2004
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:06 
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This is exactly the sort of unmeasurable RTTM effect that the SCPs are so befouled over.
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johnsher
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:52 
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not sure about rttm - unless the mean was set 20 years ago - but it's certainly a statistically insignificant change. Although it's still interesting as all the brake-type numpties would have us believe that there would be total carnage and everyone would be driving x mph faster if the motorway limit was raised by x mph.
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RobinXe
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:57 
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Yup, I feel that the most significant figures contained are those that show drivers only increased speed on average by 1.6mph when the speed limit was raised by 5.

Could the drivers be, no, surely not, they wouldn't be, it's just too much to conceive....they're not setting their own safe limit for the prevailing conditions are they? Quick, someone quench their wills with draconian, big-brother legislation!
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pogo
PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:58 
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smeggy wrote:
Is this the pirates > global warming fallacy again?

I dunno about that... But what I do know is that the "Pirates" axis on the graph that's often shown is completely wrong.

IIRC it quotes about 20 pirates for 2005, whereas, as anyone who's looked at the Foreign Office website (which has a specific area devoted to areas to avoid due to high levels of piracy) will see, it's becoming a boom industry. :-)

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civil engineer
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:20 
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What it does show is that an increase in limit did not result in an increase in fatalities.

Given that a speed limit is by definition and restriction on the rights of an individual then this would imply that the restriction is ill concieved.

For a restriction to be justified it should be proven that there are corresponding benefits.
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Gizmo
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:20 
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RobinXe wrote:
Could the drivers be, no, surely not, they wouldn't be, it's just too much to conceive....they're not setting their own safe limit for the prevailing conditions are they? Quick, someone quench their wills with draconian, big-brother legislation!


Most of Iowa's neighbouring states already have a 70 or 75 limit (apart from Illinous which is 65). It is likely that most people set their cruise control at 70 and leave their when driving from state to state. Hence the very small change in average. Truck speed limits are 55.

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Steve
PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 14:11 
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mpaton2004 wrote:
smeggy wrote:
Is this the pirates > global warming fallacy again?

This is exactly the sort of unmeasurable RTTM effect that the SCPs are so befouled over.

You misunderstood me. It is perfectly possible for an increase in limit to result with fewer deaths; I was merely posing the question of interpretation.

The difference is that the SCPs are knowingly and deliberately spouting their lies, masking over RTTM as if it was a wind-up from some cranks. The SCPs have forced their policy upon us without any regard for any scientific process (or lives lost), something they have plenty enough resource to do - whereas a journalist is simply a journalist.

RTTM is (or at least can be made to be) measurable, any decent statistician will tell you that. Regardless, it has been proven to exist and found to be greatly significant at minimum.
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SafeSpeed
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 14:29 
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mpaton2004 wrote:
This is exactly the sort of unmeasurable RTTM effect that the SCPs are so befouled over.


If RTTM was 'unmeasurable' then no benefit from speed cameras (as they are used in the UK) would ever be 'measureable'.

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mpaton2004
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 18:31 
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Sorry I was a bit loose with that comment. I meant to say "statistically insignificant decrease and measured over an incredibly short evaluation period".
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SafeSpeed
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 18:53 
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mpaton2004 wrote:
Sorry I was a bit loose with that comment. I meant to say "statistically insignificant decrease and measured over an incredibly short evaluation period".


Sorry. I've tried to plug that phrase into your earlier comment and cannot do it in a way that makes any sense. What's your point?

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ree.t
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 21:23 
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mpaton2004 wrote:
This is exactly the sort of unmeasurable RTTM effect that the SCPs are so befouled over.


If the effect is small could it then be argured that speed limits have little effect in road deaths?

ie
speed limit reduced road deaths reduced= RTTM
Speed limit increased road deaths reduced = RTTM

so fiddling around with the speed limits does little to reduce the number of people killed on the road.

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adam.L
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 22:50 
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when I worked in the USA in the mid nineties we had a trip to Montana each year to cut barley. They had just put the speed limit at " a resonable and prudent speed", ie keep it under 90 and we'll leave you alone. Deaths went down. People weren't driving any faster than before. The only people that were giving the speed limit any stick were from out of state.

How much significance does one years figures have? Not much either way I'd say. But it's good that the deaths went down the year the limits went up. If the number of deaths went up we would have heard about it.
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mpaton2004
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 01:13 
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SafeSpeed wrote:
mpaton2004 wrote:
Sorry I was a bit loose with that comment. I meant to say "statistically insignificant decrease and measured over an incredibly short evaluation period".


Sorry. I've tried to plug that phrase into your earlier comment and cannot do it in a way that makes any sense. What's your point?


The point is, you lambast (rightly) SCPs for claiming success when they quote reductions based on 12 month evaluations, so why should we expect this to be any different?
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SafeSpeed
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 02:04 
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mpaton2004 wrote:
SafeSpeed wrote:
mpaton2004 wrote:
Sorry I was a bit loose with that comment. I meant to say "statistically insignificant decrease and measured over an incredibly short evaluation period".


Sorry. I've tried to plug that phrase into your earlier comment and cannot do it in a way that makes any sense. What's your point?


The point is, you lambast (rightly) SCPs for claiming success when they quote reductions based on 12 month evaluations, so why should we expect this to be any different?


I haven't jumped in and made comment about Iowa for exactly that reason. But let's be clear - there's nothing special about 12 months, 24 months or any other period. What we need is a reliable number in excess of 500 before we start to draw firm conclusions, and the bigger the reliable number the better.

However I do think it's pretty safe to say that the speed limit increase has NOT cost a statistically significant number of lives. And of course, statistics are really at their best when they disprove a hypothesis.

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