JT wrote:
Lakeuk wrote:
I was shocked to read a 71% reduction in todays paper that I went to the CSC site to find the figures - and now I'm total confused?
So how using CSC's website figures do you get a 71% reduction?
You can't!
To get the 71% reduction you have to do some very creative "selective reporting".
What you do is pick a tiny subset of the roads, counting only those which have suffered an abnormally high number of accidents. This is the "before" figure that you use, noting of course that without lifting a finger you can pretty much guarantee the following year to have lower figures. Installing the cameras is just a red herring.
For example, let's say there is an accident outside my house, and it's the first one in 20 years. Thus the odds are that it will be another 20 years before there is another. But let's say some clown comes and erects a speed camera, he can then note that when there is (predictably) no accident in the following year there has been "a 100% reduction in accidents at this camera site".
Cambridgeshire's site is blathering on about this same BMJ report - which looked at 14 studies of camera sites - all claiming accident reduction of 55 - 69% and death reduction between 17% and 71%. As we have all read the original article on this site - and all the medics in this family have the hard copy - the article did not conclude this: it gave a "have to do much better research" grade on all the data they researched - and thus there is still no solid basis for these claims. Our patch does make use of mobile cameras - operated 100% by trained police officers and at sites which we know are problem areas and we keep roadsafety under control by maintianing a clear presence on the roads. We are looking to improve - but can honestly say we have maintained a good record on safety without fining people in their thousands.
Why am I looking at the Cambs site? Well - it's party time down there again and we are all off on a jolly on the A14 in the next coupl;e of days - so we check for the mobile locations
Last year the Mad Lad and his wife were spitting furballs over stats - and this year is no different
They have modified it to Jan 2000 to 31 Dec 2002 for their "on this day in history"
Currently on this site they claim hundreds of casualties on the roads in question for the dates 14-21 March. The relative in question hosts a party each year on on one of these dates as it's his wedding anniversary.
He's now been happily married for 25 years - and we've hit the roads in Cambs for each of these years. We have never seen any accident. We have never been held up in the clear up operations - nor has any one doctor at his party (this couple are medics too
) been recalled to attend any emergency during our stays at his home.
314 injuries on one particular day in 2000, 2001, 2002? No hold ups and no mention in the tabloids or Look East? Does not sound plausible - even on the A1307 ring road and A14/A141 roads That's over 100 people each year on this date in history...surely newsworthy enough to make it the the tabloid press and Look East?
There are a lot of people in this family collectively - some flying in from abroad to this do...none witnessed any signs of any incidents on these roads in 2000, 2001, and 2002 on these particular dates when they combine a family do with a bit of sightseeing and National Trust visits (our kids like feeding lambs at Wimpole...)
I note that they do not state by which margin the injuries have fallen either...
So - looking at all the s/cam sites - seems to me that they all work to the same pattern - and are following orders... as was the excuse at Nuremberg...