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westerndailypress

SEVENTY IS SAFER
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BY BARRY LEIGHTON B.LEIGHTON@BEPP.CO.UK

08:00 - 23 July 2007

The West police force that sparked fury among motorists by using speed cameras to permanently monitor its stretch of motorway, yesterday claimed the move has been an unmitigated success.Wiltshire Police has been using cameras to enforce the national 70mph limit on the M4 for two years.

When the cameras were first introduced there were complaints from drivers and some motorists' groups that they were being used to drive up revenues from fines, rather than to improve road safety.

But it has now been revealed that, during this period, road accident casualties have been cut by 32 per cent, with all injuries - fatal, serious and slight - slashed by 46 per cent.



At specifically signed camera sites on the M4, fatal and serious injury casualties were down 49 per cent, with all injuries down 54 per cent.

The Wiltshire and Swindon Safety Camera Partnership said it had proved its strategy had altered driver behaviour virtually throughout the Wiltshire stretch of the M4.

On average 84,000 vehicles use the Wiltshire section of the M4 in any 24 hours.

Although motorways are usually the safest types of road, taking into account the volume of traffic they carry, 12 per cent of Wiltshire's road traffic fatalities happen on the 35-mile stretch.

The partnership cites research showing the risk of collision increased considerably when there were wide variations in traffic speeds.

If all traffic travelled at a steady pace and drivers maintained a safe distance between vehicles, the risk was greatly reduced.

Permanent signs on the Wiltshire section warn motorists they are entering a speed camera zone and checks are carried out from motorway bridges.

Safety Camera Unit manager Nisha Devani said: "This dramatic reduction in crashes comes as a direct result of our strategy to enforce the national speed limit on this section of the motorway.

"No other changes have been made to slow traffic down or to make the road any safer.

"Motorists are paying attention to their driving and feedback from the public has been very positive.

"Most importantly, this improvement has been maintained over the whole of the two-year period and clearly demonstrates a positive change in driver behaviour."

Last night, Keith Peat of the Association of British Drivers, the UK's foremost campaigning group for drivers, welcomed the statistics.

He said: "This is very, very good news. It gives the lie to claims that to reduce accidents the speed limit on our motorways has to be lowered."

When I started reading the article, I wondered if this would be another RTTM magic trick.......

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

I quite liked the initials of this person's job

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

I would just like to understand what is being claimed. Are they saying that if you take the whole of the M4 section in Wiltshire, KSIs are down by 49%?

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

Well I can't remember the last time I saw a camera over the M4...

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

There don't need to be any cameras - just signs.

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

There was one there last Monday night. Somewhere near Swindon I think, but I can't remeber exactly which bridge it was on.

But



Guess what happened when people saw the camera. Do you think they maintained a steady pace?

There don't even need to be signs - garden gnomes at the roadside (or nothing at all) would be just as effective.

The whole bloody 'benefit' is RTTM.

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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

and all that's needed is a quick drive down the M4 to see it for yourself. The standard of driving and average speed is no different to any other motorway in the country.

Maybe pedestrians didn't fall off bridges in the last two years, and nobody drove the wrong-way along the carriageway, or it wasn't quite as windy - things that cameras can do nothing about but were included in the justification for the cameras in the first place.

See http://www.abd.org.uk/pr/449.htm

Strange how fatalities had been at their highest for ten years just before the cameras were installed - see the graphs at Local Issues — Wiltshire

mb

Speed differential does cause problems on all M-Ways, the M54 (2 lane) suffers quite badly from it, generally caused by either wagons or idiots in L1 doing 50.

So how will a cam set to nip at 70+ stop the problems associated with manouvres instigated by speed differential?

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Simon

Which would suggest they would agree that if all road users travelled at 110mph, but at a safe distance, it would be safe too...

Or at Warp factor 10 - but then where would the speed kills message brigade get it's advertisement cash ????

Speed , or miss use of speed - which is the killer ????

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

They should be challenged to back up their claims with hard evidence. Or, to put it more specifically, prove that the benefit they are claiming is not RTTM.

Also, where did the "positive feedback" come from?

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

Oi ! Seventy is safer - can't wait - only a few more years to go

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Of course the fact that there has been a resurfacing around Membury services, where the tarmac was terrible, with SPECS and resurfacing work at J15 have had no effect on the safety of the road

Neither has painting the two second arrows on the road with signs reminding to leave a 2 second gap just before J16(?)

There was also a bridge replacement just before J17 monitored by Gatsos.

[Edited] Didn't they also take down the Gatso on the east bound lane by J17 as it was causing too many accidents? Or was that the one nearer Wales?

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Prepare to be Judged

I'd like to see the reasons for the accidents before and after that study.

Fiver they've nothing to do with speeding anyone?

Seventys safer.....thats what ill say to the next copper that pulls me for 35 in a 30 zone....

Be a good retort to a speeding prosecution too i think, they say its safer at seventy so seventy i shall do.....everywhere. :rolleyes: dickheads.....

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"Safety" Scamera Partnerships;
Profitting from death and misery since 1993.

Believe nothing- Question everything.

Hmm, so a (allegedly) safety-oriented government organisation says its safer for motorway traffic to be all doing broadly similar speeds... so why don't we hear them calling for the abolition of lower limits for HGVs and other types of vehicles for which doesn't mean

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Chris

I wish the rest of the population analysed and disected this sort of spin as much as this board does. Unfortunately for us about 70% (probably) of the public take everything they read as true and honest, it's why we're on the downward slope