Safe Speed Forums

Quotes from a letter to the Southampton Echo from Julian Hewitt (PR Manager fro the HSCP).

"..I can give .. clear research that shows that cameras do save lives and reduce casualties and that the change from mainly survivable injuries to mainly fatal ones take place between speeds of about 30 and 40 mph."

"Research by the TRL shows that for every one mile per hour reduction in average speed there is a five percent reduction in injury accidents."

"... if road users reduced their average speed the whole community would benefit."


I should like to respond to this. What would be my best line of argument?

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

1. TRL did no such research they compiled a list of 'current thinking' which included the hypthosis from taylor et al. regarding speed reduction and casualty reduction. Taylor clearly stated that this was in the event of an accident. i.e. no such claim was made that speed reductions prevents accidents.

It is one thing to say reducing impact speed saves lives and quite another thing to say reducing free flowing speeds reduces accidents.

2. According to govt. research, the mojority of people exceed 30mph limits. If it is the case that the majority of people die when hit by traffic going faster than 30 mph, why do slight and serious injuries among pedestrains massively outway killed on urban 30 limit roads?

It is one thing to say hitting someone above 30mph is likely to kill them and another to say driving above 30mph is likely to result in a fatal accident.

Only 2% of pedestrian involved in a road accident that are injured are killed

lastly I'd ask him to publish his evidence, because clearly he will be stuffed when TRL say er what research?

alternatively a hypothosis

We only have to look at the Pedestrian Casualty data for 2003 to see that only 2% of pedestrians die when involved in a road accident. For Child peds it is 0.5%.

If you permit me to make an assumption that 80% of child accidents occured in roads with a 30 limit or less and that 60% of drivers exceed that limit.

For the implied claim to be correct we'd have 4,816 dead children last year as a result of motorists exceeding 30mph. We actually had 74 total, which suggests a hell of a difference between free travel speed and impact speed.

In 99.98% of child accidents the vehicle (while exceeding the 30 limit before the accident) did not kill the child.

I'm happy to play the figures through any alternative theories, but I think Paul has already done it somewhere on safespeed
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