Safe Speed Forums

Why does it make it hard? Just let your eyes read over it. There are people who are trying to keep up with this and the terms used, while familiar to you, can throw the rest of us so it's very useful IMHO.

I'm actually quite surprised/shocked that you seem to believe/accept everything that the government tells you as gospel. When they say jump you seem ready to say "how high sir?".

Why do you see them as so benevolent? Evidence abounds of their incompetence, bias, hidden agenda, corruption, lack of integrity...


Say chee£e £££

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I have given my thoughts on peer-review here:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... 0&start=20

but to summarise: peer review, in all but "hard science" does NOT prove a paper is "right", it indicates it has been well research, has credibility, and that someone (normally two reviewers) thinks it worthy of publication by the journal in question.

All academics are aware that work can be rejected by one journal and accepted by another. The most extreme case from my own experience was when, some 8 years ago) I got a letter from an editor saying: "we have a problem". A paper I had submitted had the following two reviews (in short):

Reviewer A: (The first part of paper is great, the second part is rubbish)
Reviewer B: (The first part is rubbish, the second part is great)

The work was published in another journal of equal standing...



On the subject of Statistics - whilst not a Statistician - my first degree is in Computational Science and Mathematics (from a "Russell Group" uni) and I took the same first year course in Statistics as those who did a degree in Mathematics and Statistics. (So not an expert but I know more than most people about it).

To me, the thing to understand is the real value in statistics is "proving that something you thought was reasonable probably ISN'T". Whilst statistics can indicate that something you thought was reasonable probably IS, it doesn't PROVE it so in a mathematics/science sense.

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I won't slave for beggar's pay,
likewise gold and jewels,
but I would slave to learn the way
to sink your ship of fools

Are you blind or just stupid?! How many times does it need to be said? Peer review is not conducted on data - it is conducted on the methodology used to obtain the data. The use of the term was a smokescreen by Mr Moonboot in order for him to sound clever and derail the opposition argument.





Not as clever as you think you are! Something is wrong with the way your browser is set up, meaning that you are not seeing the hyperlinks but are instead reading the HTML.

If that doesn't mean anything to you then do us a favour - stop trolling here and figure it out. When you have, by all means join in again.

Oh jeez, 15 splits….still, those that know me know I’m game!


I didn’t. The administrators were experimenting with a keyword hotlink system, it has since been disabled. We apologise for the inconvenience.



So where is it?

I presume you agree that I did not “clearly wanted to talk about stats”.


You didn’t put it a first way!
Ah, Tu quoque, the refuge for those who have no answers for questions put to them.
To answer yours (so now I have the high ground): the work involved in scientific publication is largely the framework one - establishing enough in each paper and dismissing those items of research that just don't belong. It's do-able, but significantly time consuming. Doing so will significantly divert efforts away from the campaign and momentum will be lost. In our view it is not yet worth it.
I’ll come to Monbiot later on.


We have "some police", but fewer on the roads than before, needlessly so because of the huge amount of paperwork they now have to do. The increased of cameras fooled people into thinking their loss was compensated; however, the continued loss of the nationwide fatality trend proves the folly of it.
Hence we can have more police on the roads without being "at the detriment of other crimes".


That’s opinion without justification - blind prejudice.
Where were those WMDs? (weapons of mass destruction)


Your source conveniently didn’t pass comment upon the very damning stats19 reports.


Well, had you have done you would have seen the truth instead of George Monbiot’s biased, cherry picked, irrelevant version of it. If anyone’s work should be peer-reviewed it should be his. Why? Well he gave the figure which didn’t allow for long-term trends, more bias on selection if you will (the national figure was falling due to many other measures, just as it was for decades before speed cameras were introduced) which of course also add to the illusion of perceived speed camera effectiveness.

The report he referred to had this to say about it:

Well I never, RTTM is proven, accepted and extremely significant, and that’s excluding other effects of bias on selection – as described again immediately below:


No, you are clearly trying to put words into my mouth. I am explaining to you bias on selection. The A3 example is likely to be mostly RTTM (as explained). The limit drop may not have been significant at all; furthermore it isn’t the only example of bias on selection.


No, I said it could play a part: "even if true". Are you trying to misrepresent me?
I said that in response to you saying that it "will" play a part. I asked you to justify the "will" in your statement. I presume anything of relevance still won’t be forthcoming.

Do you now understand bias on selection and that it is separate from RTTM and additional to the illusion of perceived effectiveness of cameras?

Are you not concerned that figures exist for the effectiveness of speed cameras but no such figures exist for other safety measures, even though they exist at cameras sites?


Isn’t that exactly what you get with RTTM? If so then explain the difference. If not then you obviously don’t understand RTTM; read the quote of the report above (or look at my sig below for a summary)

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

You'd think that anyone who genuinely wanted safer roads, wasn't a troll and didn't have a hidden agenda would be, wouldn't you? Equally you'd think that anyone who supported cameras for less than noble reasons wouldn't care, and would continue to say they supported cameras without making any effort to find out those figures. I wonder which one it is here? The suspense is killing me!

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

I shall come back to all the other points later.


Isn’t that exactly what you get with RTTM? If so then explain the difference. If not then you obviously don’t understand RTTM; read the quote of the report above (or look at my sig below for a summary)[/quote]

No, less than the mean. Understand now?

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Before you moan about middle-lane hoggers, check that you yourself are obeying all the rules of the road.

Now that it's been brought up, yes, although are you sure that there aren't figures for other things?



You've clearly already made up your mind and therefore any further discussion is a total waste of time.


EDIT: To add a point, in what way do you think that I am a troll?

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Before you moan about middle-lane hoggers, check that you yourself are obeying all the rules of the road.

Because that isn't how English is normally written. And to make things clear for you, I am talking about how it appears when editing, not how it appears when posted.



Oh really? Where do I say that I am ready to believe/accept everything that the government tells me as gospel?



Who says that I do?



I know...

But evidence also abounds of arrogance, aggressiveness, and importantly, lies, of people on here.



I don't need to, I keep to the speed limit.

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Before you moan about middle-lane hoggers, check that you yourself are obeying all the rules of the road.

No two experts agree. No two medics of equal status necessarily agree - which is why sometimes the patient will ask for a "second opinion"

But peer reviews are usually submitted by academics to a journal, which as you rightly say, deems it worthy of publication.


It is not an end in itself and open to modification or complete rejection pending further research. Some peer reviewed "findings" have also been discredited. MMR "research" comes to mind - but because of media hype - the public at large are harder to convince than the peers reviwing the latest research into this vaccine.

Any person who thinks that "peer reviews" prove some opinion is correct without need for further research or think that one academic's opinion proves anything irrefutably is neither an "academic intellect", "expert" or has any concept of what is meant by a review of a piece of work by one's peers.



When communicating the results (after asking the question.. collecting the data.. deriving the results .. taking into account all flawed sampling, ambiguities etc.. the words "APPEARS and LIKELY" are used statistically more frequently than other words

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If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
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But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Smeggy, why have you mixed up my post? That suggests to me that you have an ulterior motive like for example you are trying to avoid replying to some point. Would it help if I started numbering my points (or 'points' or you prefer)?



Well I haven't done it yet have I because I spent ages writing that post! And now I'm writing this post! Not all of us have as much time as you do.



Er, I have no idea. I shall try and come back to that. (But not in this post, yes?!)



Saying "Tu quoque", the refuge for those who can't or at least don't want to answer similar questions put back to them.

I shall come back to the following paragraph later tonight.



What on earth has the lack of WMDs got to do with the amount of spare time I have to argue road statistics with???

I simply don't have the time which you clearly do to get extremely obsessive about this issue. If you want to see that as an excuse then so be it, but you're not going to persuade anyone (imo) that you're right taking an attitude like that. I came out with my 'opinion', and then backed it up with justification, my source.

I shall come back to the rest of your post later tonight.

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Before you moan about middle-lane hoggers, check that you yourself are obeying all the rules of the road.

No, less than the mean. Understand now?[/quote]

One cam on A40 was put there because 4 boys died in one accident. All criteria for the guidelines were met.

But.. no accident occurred at this site prior to this nor since. The camera was held "effective".. only it wasn't and still isn't as the incidents occur some three miles further up at a dodgy junction per Kev Delaney who said this on a R4 programme a few months ago. We still have the recording. We are "anoraks" that way.

This cam is not the only one like it. Zero incidents occur at these sites because the road regressed back to the mean of zero if you like in these extreme cases.

There are others.. cam on A575 per my sister Jazz. A Truvelo set up in 2004. The only accident some 500 yards from this site was that of a man who died when he lost control of his car and mounted the kerb.. slightly injuring a mother and child on the pavement. He had a heart attack at the wheel. The cam is on a slight downhill in each direction. It nabs the unwary who pick up a sliver of "blip" per both Jazz and Ju-Ju who live in this rather nice area of the big 'burb.

The other A575 incident happened three quarter mile further on - some 8 years ago - where this road becomes a dual carriageway with the left lane going left or straight on and the outer lane becoming "right only" at the lights. There was a bus stop. Woman killed as she raced for the bus.


Last year at this same dual carriageway site which now has a pelican after the woman's death of some 8 years ago there - my sisters were shopping and had parked up in the car park opposite this site. Man (pensioner) crossed the road beyond the pelican crossing and an Astra setting off from the lights at the junction with said shopping mall car park - collided with him. No charges brought against the driver .. say my sisters who co-incidentally knew the 65 year old victim and the 30-odd year old driver as this 'burb, though a busy artery from Bolton to Manchester - is actually quite a small one where many know each other on nod acquaintance. Road is under-going some engineering. It seems a mini-hospital is being built there and the local Tesco is planning to expand as well. My sisters say this has led to some congestion because of extra traffic lights and many are complaining that the pelicans on the A6 (Walkden High Street) which took the life of an elderly gent they also knew very well and liked very much and was the first fatal incident here ever but there have been some less serious incidents .. are too close to the traffic lights at the wide junction with the A575 (which once used to be served by a very large roundabout until 1964 apparently) My sisters are "academically minded" .. "peer reviewed in teacher journals on their teaching subjects and general class management" - and "almost nerdy boffins" on local history of Worsley and Walkden which are about to become World Heritage towns because of their contribution to the industrial revolution despite the rather "twee gentility of the Worsley village proper at M60 J13".


But the main complaint of the above A6 appears to be that the new pelicans are close to the lights as one heads Westwards and on the side the gentleman died .. there is another junction to the shopping mall, a bus lay-by and some bill boards which seem to distract the drivers per Jazz who often walks the couple of miles to the supermarket and crosses there regularly.

No cam there though .. despite the one death and a couple of shunts. It's not lucrative.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

By the way.. looking at your sig.. I have to ask

Have ever heard or considered lane discipline or read that bit of the Highway Code where it says to assist the overtake even if the person overtaking you is above the speed limit?

We just let folk pass us when in the UK Their business and I like to drive safely and not inconvenience another - but reserve the right to protect myself and my precious passengers.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

It's simply about hypocrisy.

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Before you moan about middle-lane hoggers, check that you yourself are obeying all the rules of the road.

I didn’t mix it up, I merely made it easier to follow; the 15 slices didn’t help matters.
I know how to manage expectation but I have no intention of doing that here (not worth the risk of being rumbled). If you think I missed anything significant then please do bring it do my attention.


Time isn’t the issue. Of course I know my arguments very well, I also accept that others may not. I’m also very proficient with my PC so I can muster much of the data I need very quickly. I also realise you’re getting it from all angles. Don’t worry, I have patience.


It was in response to your comment about the trust you have in the government.


Is that a hint of ad hominem?

I responded to what was asked of me. It’s not my problem if I answer your questions properly.


I will respect any opinion so long as it withstands scrutiny. Your opinion is based on nothing more than the opinion of another – that is no justification.



Why should Paul expend so much effort to shut one person up? As I already said, preparing for peer-review is not a simple issue.
If his major criticism is the lack of peer-review, then he is two faced (no such calls for government peer-review) and our arguments are stronger than he admits to; perhaps that is why the peer-review issue has become such a sticking point for some people.

How?

Wildy should really reply on this as she had this particular incident to deal with in a safety led for all way/

She was ahead of me that night. We were on our way home from work and we happened to meet up on the M6. There was a convoy of caravans in L1. I was three cars behind my wife in L2.


I saw her draw level with the first caravanner in the convoy.. We were about a mile or so from our junction and I was contemplating moving into L3 and just overtaking the three cars and my wife ahead of me.. only to do so would mean an acceleration to 85 mph to clear all this and return to L1 with a decently safe margin. We are at Shap and I know there will be a van ..so I set in for an "elephant style pass" (not so safe - but "legal" ::wink: - sucking in breath as I know that if I cannot return to L1 .. I face a long detour back home. There was no gap.. these caravanners were really tailgating each other but no cam would have done them for this


Wildy was legal. She drew level with the leader of the convoy and looked set to solidly complete this overtake at a dead 70 mph with room to spare... only the idiot 'vanners decided to accelerate to an "illegal for them" speed My wife made a decision .. her origin had alerted her to hotspot for a van.. but she's one quick type and she noted no van this time.. so .. she hit the oomph pedal and passed .. returning to correct lane and legal speed within a second .. and I followed her as my own in-car gadget also informed me that both me and my licence would be safer to do this.


So .. we are safety led drivers.. we tend to avert incident rather than contribute to it. It;s called COAST by the way. and Franklin also preaches this more or less in Cycle Craft.

By the way ,.. I do not ride my bike very fast in the local parks or national Fell paths. Somehow.. I happen to respect other people.

I cannot say the same for the uninsured cycling idiot who ruined a nice pair of trousers and caused me an SI in that I had to have stitches in my wound after being pushed into gas works by one selfish lycra clad idiot on a pavement .. the sort who undermines serious cycling in the same way as the chav unlicenced or just as chav minded pig ignorant motor mouth

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

It is you who does not understand.

At camera sites, the 3 year baseline, the time "immediately before" (your words), has suffered an unusual cluster of accidents, enough to suddenly justify the existence of the camera site. That will have inflated the short-term rate "immediately before" installation, the "mean" if you will, to significantly above the long-term rate. Of course, the accident cluster being random time and location wise, is very unlikely to happen at the same spot again – lighting doesn’t strike in the same place twice.
This is classic RTTM!

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

I am wondering if we talking to George here..

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

I wondered the same. It's certainly not impossible that he could be fishing for chinks in armour. It shouldn't matter anyway; an argument is an argument and the messenger shouldn't matter.



All,

I've not been given reason to conclude that hjeg2 is disingenuous but I don't think some of the responses are helping matters.

Could I ask that the discussion is kept civil. Thanks.

Could be, but my money's on an ex-Cycling+ regular who's missing the poisonous, dogmatic atmosphere there. It wouldn't be too difficult to narrow it down as even that lot mainly had the right idea about how idiotic deliberate lane-hogging is. Mister Paul (Jub Jub) was one notable exception....

The idea that speeding is somehow as bad as lane-hogging is Upminster (way beyond Barking ), and I don't really think he actually believes it, it's just one of his ways of provoking us. Admittedly it worked rather well, at least at first.

The style has become a bit less antagonistic and troll-like since the final warning though. Maybe there's hope yet.

_________________
Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

All accidents have chance co-oincidence to them. No two accidents are exactly the same as to how they come about either.

A cam ist erected based on series of incidents .. which do not share the same prime/contributary causes .. but neither could speeding above lolly be actually defined as the cause unless the speedo stuck und many witnesses able to confirm the drivers were way too fast - but they tend to say so as they do not resally know und it "alll happen so fast anyway" .

Two boys hit a tree in bad weather, They were not speeding. But one tyre had a bulge defect .. it believed this blow at LOW speed to cause a fatal. Had two more pals been in this car - then this would qualify for a cam as it did on the one on the A40. But then the crash scene regress to mean of almost zero incident before this incident.

But ....since accidents are ephemeral und one dangerous road became "tamed" as a result of re-engineering - there are number of factors which should be taken into account before whacking up a cam in the absurd belief that this magically saves a life. Other factors.. even one as simple as changing a route to work have to be taken into account as well.


The other issue ist that the the stats of KSI not recorded prior to three/four year history of three/four KSI at the site in question und we have tangible evidence downloaded to a word document somewhere in our archives of one partnership justifying a mobile cam because "400 people KSI at this site over past 4 years" This equated to a major incident each year.. only we happen to be on that road .. all 50 -odd of ys in this family on way to a family do there. We never held up.. never saw any "incident" und given the host of that party also a medic und invited his collegues.. none were called back to red alert.

But it when you look at the recent history of these roads und Dr Mountain also accepted that RTTM was occurring in work she undertook und I gather she updating her research too as she admitted later that the piece only "skimmed the surface" in reality. She find there more to meet the eye here.

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
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Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
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Je ne regrette rien!