Safe Speed Forums

Perhaps the detrimental influence of speed cameras & speed policy on driving standards has reached "saturation point", and thus the historic downward trend from safer cars, better medical care etc has now surfaced/resumed.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

Obviously there's no single-cause explanation.

But here's another one to throw into the mix - 2008 was the first full year of the smoking ban in England and Wales, which has caused the trade of many pubs to fall off a cliff and thus must surely have greatly reduced the incidence of drink-driving.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Asda were bought out by the USA firm Wal-Mart and the resultink boycott of their stores has caused massive congestion around Sainsburys and Morrisons resulting in slower speed collisions and less injury.

I predict the death of Michael Jackson will cause Fewer KSI's as people drive slower because their eyes are cloudy with grief. He had millions of fans who just happen to drive, perhaps the reduction will be seen worlwide! Oww!

All well reasoned in my view.

GET A LIFE!

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

The figures are interesting, but not too much.
Most areas have shown a decrease in motorcycle accidents....one down from 6 killed/year to 4/year, a decrease of 33%.
Another figure to throw into the mix is this: riddor reports (capable of manipulation by illegal non-reporting) show a reduction in work-related-driving accidents. ie: your local reps are not repping as much etc.
In a time of economic recession you can easily expect a rather dramatic reduction in people driving to, and for, work.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Come on jomukuk; the figures are just as interesting as when they were not decreasing; how short a memory can be when figures are inconvenient.

There is no unusually large involvement of "driving for work" in the fatal casualty figures; a further guess on your part and accepted as a "reasoned argument" an assumption though that has no base. If you had the facts you would not have made that assumption so why use it without?

If it was easy to predict a reduction in driving and therefore casualties in a recession why didn't you do it before the figures were released, perhaps your reasoning wasn't working in that recession.

Oooh Err! Are we getting rattled Tony?

Well done, GreenShed, you have very quickly forced the full weight of Safespeed reasoning to be brought against you.

I'm surprised no-one so far has claimed that the reduction in deaths should be credited to the Safespeed campaign.

Oh it will...I can't wait.

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

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

I appologise for getting techey. As a group the quality of debate sunk below my expectations.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

My reasoning always works, although sometimes I reason that reasoning isn't reasonable in certain circumstances.
And the figures for work-related deaths and injuries [due to driving accidents] have been a matter of some concern (to health and safety practitioners) for some time. After all, work-related road accidents make-up a significant proportion of the total.
Don't forget, a bus accident involves at least one employee, and probably more than one.
So does a truck accident.
Etc.
The employers duty of care to the employee DOES involve them when the employee is driving on their behalf.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Greenshed if you want to demonstrate a causal link between the current change in road deaths and road safety policy you will have to indicate what changed in a policy which has been long running to suddenly have this impact.

The other users of this board have indicated a number of factors which have a logical if not demonstrable impact on the number of deaths. The most important off these are perhaps the recession and high fuel prices both of which I believe have previously been shown to be corrolated with rfeductions in road deaths.

It is interesting although probably irrelavent that these results seem to coincide with decline in speed camera policy. I am thinking here of the end of hypothication, Swindon Councils decision and Brunstrum's recent comments.

On alcohol and its potential influence on the figures. I believe, but have no current reference, that overall consumption has fallen but consumption by certain individuals is greater. I personally think the people inclined to binge drinking are more likely to be involved in accidents. Consequently I am not convinced by the arguement that there are fewer accidents involving alcohol.

The real test of all this will be the evolution of the figures over the next 3 - 5 years. It is clear from this discussion that it is possible to jump to conclusions by looking solely at a single year's statistic.

won't there be a big shift in road deaths (not RTA's) once the Scrappage Scheme cars start crashing? A crash in an 11+ year old car will be worse than in a new NCAP tested motor. It's still a crash and still an insurance claim, but more survivable, which, no doubt, the camera partnerships will pat themselves on the back.

Or is that, 'average year 2008, bad year 2007?' And another thing, aren't these derived from and skewed by Stats 19 returns?

Killed road stats are very accurate, seriously injured can be influenced by the decisions of the police/ambulance crews at the accident site. Go home? go directly to hospital? Serious or slight?

A&E admissions are a better measure. A lot of those sent home apear at an A&E unit during the following 24 hours.

2007/2008 was fairly good road accident stats.

I would agree that if pauls graph going back to the introduction of speed cameras shows reduction in road deaths tailing off, there must be a maximum influence that that policy can have. and now that deployment of camerad has leveled out or even started to retract we should see a return to the normal gradient of slope before the influance of cameras.

Whilst swindon have withdrawn from fixed cameras there have been a lot of cameras deployed within roadworks sites and huge spend on gantries on our motorways to house cameras. Many are empty but they do induce paranoid driving.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

As the bulk of scrappage-bought cars are little and cheap, they're probably quite slow too, so if it IS all down to numerical speed (and I've been wrong all this time) accident rates should fall. Let's face it, if speed did kill, you'd be pretty safe in (e.g.) a Kia Picanto...

Hmmm, and methinks 'therein lies the rub'. Until some means is found to record near misses and correlate same to KSi, then these stats don't do a lot to hearten me, I'm afraid. They're hardly a step change, are they? After all, some people will suffer before we can see if the 2009 stats maintain a downward trend. But, then, I've always been intrigued by the value of probabilities.

It may be of interest to know that, when I asked the chap in charge of our Council's roadsafety for some road-specific accident-stats history , he opened his response with an overly happy promotion about how road accidents had been reduced on the County's roads during 2008.

They're spoonfed it every day!!!

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.