Safe Speed Forums

i currently am undertaking a project, i was pointed towards this forum off another forum.

the title of this project is - does the government place speed cameras with the intention of saving lives or to make money?

i have plenty of primary research but what i am struggling to find is offical stats / how much is it to create a speed camera? / anything else you can think of?

it would be a great help if i could find out information on the costs of building a camera + to run it mainly but also anything else will be a great help

many thanks in advance! patrick.

Hi Patrick


I wouldn't necessarily point fingers at the government. Their revenues from camera fines are small compared to their other sources; however, the $CP$ ($afety Camera Partnership$) certainly rake it in.

The criteria for camera placement contains a convenient clause that results with cameras appearing more effective than they actually are.

Basically, cameras are placed where one can expect a subsequent fall of collisions, even if no safety treatment at all is applied in that location.
This illusion is called Regression To The mean (RTTM – click).
This is very significant, well understood and proven beyond any doubt. This is shown in the Four Year Report (The national safety camera programme: Four-year evaluation report):
For a typical KSI fall of 55% at (~200 urban) camera sites, 35% of that is the RTTM, another 10% is long-term trends (national reduction trend not due to cameras; e.g: car design), the final 10% being the "scheme effect".
Initial work showed the RTTM level at rural sites was even higher, but this evaluation was never fully carried out.


There’s more.
The "scheme effect" isn’t necessarily the cameras. Many cameras, especially urban ones, are accompanied by other genuinely effective safety measures (e.g: pedestrian crossings/barriers, cycle facilities, etc). I call this illusion of camera effectiveness "Bias On Selection", the placement of other safety measures that increases the rate of KSI fall at "camera sites", wrongly leading to the appearance that cameras are more effective than they actually are (this is separate and additional to RTTM).
This effect has not been researched, but the logic of it is undeniably real and significant and may actually be masking an overall negative benefit from these cameras..

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

http://www.the-actuary.org.uk/872446

See item 8 on this page to see how much money is at stake - be it "honestly" or fraudulently.

Redspeed International used to boast on their web site how much money the company was making. Now they are very coy, but take a look around their site, and see how many units they claim to have supplied, and it is clear that the cost per unit is slight, compared to the cost to the tax payer when they purchase them.
Google "cost of vandalised speed camera" and you will find claims of vandalised cameras costing from £10,000 to £35,00 to replace!

http://www.uxbridgegazette.co.uk/west-london-news/local-uxbridge-news/2010/01/08/speed-camera-vandalism-sparks-debate-113046-25558298/

Finally I suggest that you contact Swindon Council, who stopped supporting the speed camera partnership, to spend their road safety grant on other measures.

_________________
Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

You may also like to investigate why it is that the very people who are in the business of knowing exactly who and what are the real risks on our roads do not penalise drivers with a speeding conviction like they do for other violations.

I’ve noticed trolls always conveniently avoid that question; it doesn’t fit with their argument.

Try it yourself Patrick, both with and without a speeding endorsement using an online site like eCar or eBike or Swinton or....

Then try it with something which is a real danger, like overtaking on double white lines or going over a red light

_________________
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.

iv completed a questionaire, and taken onboard the tips given out and everything...

but i still cant find any information on excatly how much it is to build a camera, how much it is to run and how much they generate per county such as essex, hampshire and so on to put into a table which i think will be extremely useful but however nigh on impossible to find?

iv also used facebook for my primary research... i wonder if i was allowed to use facebook? lol!

paddy0612

There are many things that we can tell you to help you appreciate the wider implications of the entire Camera Enforcement System and how it effects motorists and the 'bad behaviours' it can inspire sadly.

You would need to approach the Camera Manufacturers - they might respond positively ? I assume you mean trade ? Reverse engineering one is one way - buying one and component costing then allowing a budget for overheads and research and development may help you arrive at an approximate figure.

The running costs and how many cameras is a bit of a black hole. You will have to approach every Partnership individually and hence why is it so hard, especially when some come back with preciously little information. You can only arrive at approximate figures than precise one's.
This alone speaks of commerce and profits, than an open honest system that is there only for genuine road safety.

Depends on the copyright ... if you copy what someone has said and then use it word for word - not your version of what they meant and a reference - then you must seek copyright permission to use it. Do retain all your references (excel file is great for this or document management systems). Most material you will need to seek copyright permissions the rule is if you are at all for one second unsure - ask. Copyright permission is a potentially exceptionally expensive problem to solve if you make a mistake.
Having solid irrefutable facts are best, can you say this to the facebook resources that you have used ? They might be, but try to back all things up, contact every company etc.
Certainly be interested to know more about your purpose, aim, intention, depth of thoroughness that you intend to go to ... and your results.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Mods - few years ago we used to compile the SCP account data - anyone any idea of where to find te last lot ,before hiving off stopped - might give paddy some comparison ideas .The cost of a camera seems to vary ,depending on many factors -and it gets higher if it's been set on fire etc

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

FOI detailed budgets from relevant authorities? Might require research effort that is not entirely web-based however!

_________________
Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

i dont think its possible to gain info on how much the cameras were excatly / to run / how much they make individually across the country

why?

the government if you look at the safety schemes and all sorts of sites they do not reveal this just how much theyv reducded RSI ... useful! the lingering question remains un-answered - how much have you spent / made to reduce RSI's so effectively?

i dont think i can access this info as it is info the govt wouldnt want the public to know? so... i will try my best but another issue bearing down on me my assigment is only 3000 words long yet iv done so much research and feel quite strongly about this now to the extent i feel like i can do 10,000 easily lol! but i have to remember its only 3000 words long..

this has been a great help though, interesting info and so on, iv included a fair bit of info from this site onto my project

This site will expect royalties you know?

_________________
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.

No we don't ! - We do require a clear credit though to each article used - and clear reference to each webpage - thanks.
So can you tell us (me) what the topic is that you are doing - please?
Any queries just contact me ... email PM or call.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

havard referencing and it will be printed off to show as part of the research, no cheating

the topic is titled = 'Does the government place speed cameras with the intention of saving lives or to make money?'

basically just to answer the two questions, in the title... but there are lots of things that are added on... i think i have enough but if i am struggling i will contact you

thank you all again, patrick.

When you say RSI, is that the same as KSI? (Killed or Seriously Injured).

That KSI reduction isn’t a result of their efforts, but they try to claim it is anyway. Their claims of KSI reduction is completely flawed and has been proven to be, at the very least, greatly exaggerated (see my earlier post).

They're meant to be helping society, but they’re not very transparent are they

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

yeah i mean KSI lol! sorry got confused with RSI (repeative strain injury linked to ICT)

You may like the 'Case Against Speed Cameras' printed with The Telegraph (still has comments the latest one is very interesting) - I am sure you have found many of the webpages extremely useful!
What may not be that obvious is that in many ways nearly all the pages - relate to each other ... that is the 'involvement and intricacies' of motoring and road safety.
The ability to understand; speed vs speeding, driving to conditions, potential hazards / developing, RTTM, 85th percentile all help to relate to why cameras cannot help road safety. Add to this TRL595 and TRl 321 and it all starts to show why we have questioned their cations for the 'flawed road safety policy'.

The recent comment in The Scotsman "Jim Dale of the Scottish Safety Camera Programme, "We are working with Transport Scotland to look at criteria that would allow us to make a business case for more." Here
As malcommw stated that "Business case? This can only mean making more money from fine income than the cost of the cameras. Shouldn't he have mentioned safety?
If the information given in the article is correct then the very small number of fines issued after the installation of cameras should mean that any "business case" will be diffcult to make."
I could not agree more ! It has become a business. By all means get in touch ...

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Have you asked someone from an organisation who would know the answers you seek?

You have assumed that the government (and councils and the police) would seek to prevent information from being released to you but you have not said you have approached them.

While it is clear that members of this forum have a view and indeed some would give an expert view of some of the considerations you need to take into account you would have difficulty in working out what is or is not a worthwhile opinion of "fact".

There is little in this thread of worth and you will be hard pushed to find any information based upon facts from Safety Camera Partnerships or government figures...stands by for the sarcastic comments on the Safety Camera Partnerships or government figures...indicative of the efficacy of the forum commentary.

I would say a good place to start on the "does it make money?" question is the high level accounts operated and published by the Treasury and the DfT that can be used as a simple profit and loss account. The principle operated by the 2 government departments is that there is no direct link between money in and money out and the money collected in fines is usually quite close to the money paid out in the cost of running the system, net profits being close to £0.00.

In that simple accounting the answer must be "to save lives" but further consideration should be given to just simple accounting as this answer. It is the considered opinion of road safety experts from many areas of the industry and governments that speed management yields reductions in the amount and seriousness of casualties as a result of road traffic collisions; in that respect a reduction in government spending in the investigation of death and the care of those either affected by he deaths and those seriously injured may be considered in some way as "making money" because it is a saving in a high level government budget thereby making a notional "profit" from that reduced spending.

You will find it difficult to find the price of a camera installation because they differ in cost depending on the amount of cameras bought by each county at any time or even the amount of cameras they say or are assessed as possibly buying. In addition to this there is a separate installation cost; it is cheaper to install a camera in a town than it is to do so in a rural area; for instance I have been asked to pay almost £100,000 for a power cable and £50,000 for a telephone line and that was before you purchase the camera and dig holes to put it in. In the town this may reduce to around £150 for the telephone line and nothing for the power. Maybe an average for the whole country could be £60-75k for installation. The costs of running the cameras is a far more difficult thing to estimate as this depends on the type of camera and how often it is used. Digital cameras can be used 24/7 and catch thousands of motorists a week (potentially) and need no roadside attention whereas wet-film cameras, the biggest installed population in the UK, require roadside attention so do not operate a high duty cycle. This means that digital cameras are less expensive to run in that they need little in the way of attention and stores but produce more work for the police back-office administration staff and of course the courts; wet-film cameras don't work often, require swathes of film and processing yet have little in the way of on-costs for the legal organisations. The costs are dependent therefore on the type of camera, the amount it detects and the way in which it is operated and will change from county-to-county.

The process of cases through the courts when they leave the fixed penalty procedure places a huge financial load on the courts and hence the government; you would need to mention this and make an estimate based upon courts service figures.

IMHO, cameras are operated on a fixed budget enforced by central government and that fixed budget now exceeds the revenue from number of fines collected, so in respect of a simple cash analysis it runs at a loss. If you include savings from a reduction in injury and death then you have an area of fiscal and social profit that could be mentioned. If, as is proposed by the membership of the forum here and the site founder in materials elsewhere on the site, the system creates more death and injury then the government and society are loosing £100M's so running it to make money is failing.

It would be interesting to see your bibliography and of course to understand who was going to make the assessment of your answer as there are very few who would be able to make that assessment. Perhaps they are simply going to assess you breadth of research and analysis technique. My recommendation is to learn to asses the efficacy of Internet content as much of it is unreliable and questionable at best.

If you have not approached the DfT for your figures then you have failed at the first hurdle.

Good luck.

well much is available online and why assume that he has not ?

as you have a view to it is just an opposing view and that is fine, but we expect you to debate that than condemn it outright. As for fact well they are on the website for all to see.

well we can but try and ask some is available - Thames Valley SCP used to publish a lot of information online but recently not so much. With 44 now separately running organisations it is very hard to collate all the data.
Curious that you 'back' their approach yet also admit that it is so hard to obtain facts. With ours online at least we are open and frank.

Got any sources for that ? You also forget that the SCP and it's closely linked Companies, obtain direct funding from their Speed Awareness Courses and that brings in profits and prevents 'some/much' of the money even arriving at the Treasury as they can pocket this directly, and hence why the Courses have become so popular to run and shortened in length from a day to 2 hrs in some cases.

Road Safety is not about totting up pennies and to consider simple math can equate to it is extreme !
Whilst during the recession they are showing a reduction in fatal accidents as we predicted, as have others involved in Stats, the SI accidents are climbing in many areas. The fact that hospital data showing higher numbers of SI than the police figures, has never been publicly explained. Care to Comment Officially ?
The money making as you phrase it, is the enforcement for illegal actions of motorists that might not necessarily have any effect of safe travelling at all. In other words they are penalised by numeric values for the 'sake' of it yet may otherwise be traveling safely at the time of offence. That become a dis-respected policy and seen as persecution of the motorist. We are as the UK used to be in favour of intelligent and genuine road safety policies, that help to prevent the accidents in the first place. That way there is less need to have in place expensive after care, as less accidents mean less cost. The Dft website (within their docs online/downloadable), admits that cameras are the cheaper option than police so yes it does look for cheap options, cameras fund themselves. Penalties continue, people still travel at above the limit.

Yep totally agree. Each County needs to be very open about the figures yet look how hard it is ! Why? This is public funds they are spending or wasting as in our view.
Exactly it is all about the bottom line - business NOT Road Safety.
So why have them? If in your view as you do, think that you see a benefit why have them empty? That just creates a 'cry-wolf' and encourage paranoia - hardly attributes of good motoring attitudes and behaviours to instill on the public ?
See the business bottom line again - not road safety, where is the benefit to the motorist?

Again it is all a bit hidden and hard to source, and find yet this is all public money and meant to be for 'the common good'. Why the Gov has not got these figures already to 'hand' and at least openly available make a serious question as to the viability of this policy. A judge recently question all the Court motoring fines and questioned the police allocation ... so even the Courts are objecting now ...(here)

So they need to collect all the fines possible. hence the business attitude so apparatus in the scheme. Appreciate this is your opinion but if the figures are not possible to source and find accurately you cannot assume that at all, then you will have to taken into consideration the benefir to the 'common good' too. That is IMO the real heart of the question. And rightly he is looking for all views. Be wrong if he didn't too. Shame the government cannot do their job properly and be as unbiased too !
And where are the source for those figures ?
And how do you account for the recession effect on them, or do you not? Or is that not part of your job?
What most concerns us is the loss of life and further injuries caused from this failed and fundamentally flawed policy. There is a lot said on the website, that takes time and effort to fully understand - I agree it is a complex issue. There are many camera enforcement companies that are making money that is very clear - some show their figures look at SPECS just to start with.
Yes I woudl be interested too to know and understand the outcome after also I hope receiving a copy of his findings.
So the figures obtainable though the Gov resources /SCP or other official sources over the internet, might not be honest or reliable that is most interesting ?
Bearing in mind that much of our own data is government sourced directly, by mail and from official sources that makes us more reliable than others - wonderful.

_________________
Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Was thinking of a year or so back ,when we used to post up SCP data and analyse it - come in Roger -does this ring a bell -and more importantly - have we still got it .

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

It's all very well to say no profit is made at the very top level of government accounting, though sources for this claim are conspicuous by their absence, but even if this is the case, there are still companies profiting from the policy, and individuals getting paid. Also, how much has been taken out of this pot before it reaches the top level, allegedly breaking even?

_________________
Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.