Bmwk12 wrote:
Quote:
Can you please try to be a little less adversarial?
No personnel problem with the chap, however when he post such un established claims, he is going to create a back lash
Certainley i will try a more diplomatic approach.
Perhaps he could try a more truthfull approach
You are right to be sceptical Steve.
I would like to say however that I have no residual work based or financial involvement with safety cameras, and I am open minded enough to consider well made views and opinions backed up by fact or experience. This is one of the reasons why I can now see that the anti camera lobby has a well founded road safety argument which is based on a lot of evidence, and I have to say, I agree with most of it.
I’m glad to see that, in almost every case, the arguments are made for road safety, not those of the road racer, who sees cameras as a restriction on his ‘right to hoon’.
If the anti-camera argument was indisputable, both in the field of KSI collision reduction and residential quality of life speed calming measures, I’d argue to have them binned. I don’t have any emotional attachment to them other
than the one my wife bought me for Christmas! 
I trust that if you listen to a well made point based on fact and experience, you will manage to fit it into your overall mind's view of the subject.
From February 2004 until recently I have kept a record of KSIs which I was made aware of, and I asked the officer in charge of the investigation,
Was anyone exceeding the speed limit?
Was the speeder a primary ‘at fault’ drive? and
Was the primary cause of the accident because of the driver’s desire to drive quickly?
I haven’t time this morning to write my views out first hand so I have copied from posts I’ve made on CSCP forum.
Re my analysis on speed and KSIs
Quote:
Observer wrote:
I HAVE listened to your stats (I can't find them now because the restrictions they've impose here seem to stop me from searching all posts by user). As far as I recall, your observation is that a majority of KSI crashes you're called to involve excess speed as a significant contributory factor to the crash itself and/or to the severity of injuries. That's not really surprising. The physics make it inevitable that death/serious injury is more likely at higher impact speeds.
However, I also note (again I can't quote specific posts) that you have identified certain 'non-compliant' groups including (inter alia) boy racers, bikers, persistent offenders, unlicensed/uninsured drivers. I take it you do not see this group as anything but a minority of all drivers. I also imagine (you can confirm or deny) that it is drivers from this group who are disproportionately represented in the KSI crashes (at least on the causation side).
I also recall that your enforcement method is to use discretion (again a recent post) by forming a qualitative assessment of driving NOT just a quantitative speed measurement.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here. If I could find the posts I would quote them.
These are my impressions of your recent posts. Sorry if I have misrepresented you - it is not intended.
You are very close, observer.
I don’t have any facts which state categorically that safety cameras save lives.
My own experience of 73 KSIs which I have looked closely at recently show that excess speed was a factor in 43 and not in 19. The other 11 were difficult to assess, so I’ve discounted them. I don’t hear about all KSIs in the county, but if I do I try to find out the whether excess speed was a factor.
I have looked not only at the causation of the RTC but also the cause of the effects, which in my view gives a full picture of the effect of excess speed on KSIs.
Within that there is currently +90% (39 out of 43) where the ‘at fault’ driver was the speeder AND the major causation factor was in some way related to efforts to drive quickly.
I accept that I probably get to hear about the fatals and serious SIs more than the others, and therefore excess speed involvement would likely be higher than throughout the entire range of KSIs.
This is a simple straw poll from which I have held no records, and as such I do not expect much credence to be placed on them. They have however provided me with a strong belief that total ‘active’ speed limit compliance will reduce fatalities quite dramatically.
My own fairly unscientific research would tend to suggest to me that the cameras are encouraging speed limit compliance in a reasonable percentage of drivers. This is having a beneficial effect on fatalities. The stats tend to show however that the numbers of
uninfluencable drivers is on the increase. I’d describe these not as simply the ones who don’t comply, but specifically groups such as
Drink, drug drivers,
Disqualified Uninsured drivers,
Criminal activity
Boy racers
Weekend bikers
Pressurised commercial motorists.
These groups are now featuring more and more significantly on our fatal stats, possibly involved in 60 to 75% of all fatal accidents.
In my opinion therefore on first analysis, there would be a good argument for total active speed limit compliance.
However when you look at the groups who are causing the KSIs, the vast majority are in the above groups, who will not be influenced by speed cameras, probably up to 80% if you include tiredness, so we have to ask if the speed enforcement policy is able to have any great effect.
I’ve given my views on this in the below post again from CSCP forum, which was a response to
this thread again started by Observer.
Quote:
I’ve read Observers post with interest and it concurs largely with what I see. I think we'd more or less agree that the major issues which need to be addressed regarding fatality reduction are the
really high risk groups – I don’t include law abiding (apart from speeding
motorists) in that group. We probably have about 10-20% of our traffic (guess) causing 70% of fatalities, and I think this is the real point which the government and those responsible for the overall road safety programme need driven home.
But we are on a safety camera forum, and none of the above in any way diminishes what I believe is the important role cameras play. I believe as Observer has hypothesised that we do achieve a safety dividend from cameras, not only by the specific positioning of them, but by the raising of road awareness in the vast majority of compliant but merely functional drivers, whose concentration lapses cause collisions. (The social issues addressed by cameras could be as important but are not relevant to this thread.)
I have tried to indicate the problem
as I see it on a chart. The figures (other than the total fatality figures per year) are theoretical, and the number of fatalities per year are factored to relate to the 412 bvkm driven in 1993 ( ie if in 2002 we had 3431 fatalities in 486bvkms I have adjusted that figure to 1993 mileages. This gives a figure for 2002 of 3431*412/486 ie 2910 fatalities).
I see 2 distinct groups who seem to be fighting against each other to maintain the status quo of annual fatalities. I’ve called them compliant and non compliant.
I’d define compliant in this context as ‘law abiding’ people who are safety conscious motorists
including those who speed in situations
they feel is safe.
The non compliant group are the ones I’ve mentioned numerous times earlier, but include drunk, drugged, disqual, uninsured, weekend bikers, boy racers, tired drivers, pressurised impatient commercial motorists.
*My own vision is therefore that cameras are valuable to all sectors of the compliant group, but primarily those who do not normally give much thought to their driving.* The problem is that the remainder of the compliant group,
ie the ones who concentrate and consider their driving and are probably the safest drivers become victims (to a degree – they don’t need to speed), but the safety dividend for them is almost non existent, and the inconvenience is evidently hard to equate with the safety dividend. (This is the category into which I’d place almost all of the ‘anti camera’ lobby.)
I think that addressing this imbalance would go a long way to improving the popularity of cameras even within this group. I think that 80mph limits on motorways and variable tolerances (time of day, location, weather) could help, along with education for first offence.
Quote:
My own vision is therefore that cameras are valuable to all sectors of the compliant group, but primarily those who do not normally give much thought to their driving.
My explanation for this is a counter theory to Paul’s theory about concentration being at it’s most effective when driving at your own safe speed. I think this is true for the cognitive driver, who is applying COAST at all times. However we have a significant percentage of motorists who really give little thought to their driving. They are thinking more about their supermarket shopping list or their next business appointment in town. They perhaps on arrival at their destination may not even be able to recall their journey. Many of these people are the type who will drive on an A road at 40 miles per hour, then continue into town at….. 40 mph!
The existence of speed cameras or the threat to their licence retention will make these drivers consider their driving more than they did previously, and any improvement in concentration is a bonus in my book. The double dividend is that the free travelling speed is reduced meaning that vulnerable road users are much more likely to survive in any case.
I believe that the movement in SI stats and the reductions shown in fatalities involving vulnerable user groups over the last few years provides strong support for this analysis.
I don’t consider myself a numb supporter of speed cameras. I do not like gatso at all. I’d rather see it evolve to covert specs type cameras in villages and residential areas (cost would probably currently be prohibitive), with massive pre-entry information about the speed limit through the area, the reason why the speed should not be exceeded, and buzz phrases to encourage COAST.
Hope I have explained my personal position to you Steve, but as I said earlier I am always happy to listen to and adjust my view and opinion when I hear well made argument.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
Members
! What's the limit here?" Often no idea so assume the worst and call it 30