Safe Speed Forums

Watlington Road camera

One of the A44 Woodstock cameras
A needlessly low limit?

The sample sizes seem suspiciously small. I wonder if they have been convenient with their baselines and/or measurement length/timeframe.

http://www.speedcameramap.co.uk shows there are at least 20 camera sites in that small area; there are 72 fixed cameras in Oxford. So why did they choose only those two to report on?

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

It's a non-story unless speed related accidents increase by a statistically significant amount.

Typical scameratimanship - pick a small sample then project it universally and try and pass it off as reflecting the whole .Had they added the rider"at the sites we checked" ,then perhaps we might have some faith in their return to honest reporting .

It's like little girl meets big dog - and dog growls ,so parents say dogs are dangerous .Had she met another 100 dogs and none growled ,but greeted her would her parents say dogs are dangerous ,or some dogs are dangerous ?

_________________
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

a little confused with this story, if the cameras were switched off how could they work out who was speeding- and thinking of it would the public be aware they were switched off,

Monitoring could be done from unmarked van etc .It was a news item ( almost nationally) that the cameras were being switched off on Monday .

_________________
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

Can anyone find the raw, non-cherry-picked, compliance data of all the Oxford cameras, over a decent time frame?

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

So if "The tests were carried out in Watlington Road, Cowley, and the A44 in Woodstock from Thursday till Monday.", how did they establish a baseline for when the cameras were still active????

Or did they compare the number of cars that were flashed by the cameras (which would be set some MPH above the speed limit) with the (later) number of cars that exceed the limit by even just 1MPH????

mb

It does not say how much faster they were going, nor at what time of day or night.
Nor does it say why when they have no funding to operate, they seem to find enough to carry out the survey!

Like Steve, I think 5 days over a summer holiday is too small a sample.
Traffic in Kendal slows down enormously when the schools go back - but the average speed is usually taken over a full 12 months.

This is part of a huge propaganda effort to justify the failed experiment of using speed cameras to improve driving and safety.

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

I think boomer has hit the nail on the head; this is meaningless without a distribution of how much they were exceeding the limit by, and for a statistically significant period, both before, and long enough after the switch that we can be sure it is not an artefact stemming from the change.

Personally I would take heart from an increased number of drivers a mph or two over the limit, as this would suggest that their eyes were on the road, and not glued to their speedos. I can also envisage some drivers passing the cameras over the limit as a fingers up to them; the scameraship cannot expect no smugness from the driving population they have spent years fleecing!

_________________
Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

The off topic posts have been split into this thread.

You got to love this – massive distortion through the use of percentages to back up a point of view! The question I would ask the safety partnership to answer is this:

As a percentage of all vehicles traveling on each, road how many motorists were obeying the speed limit after the cameras were switched off compared with those obeying it whilst they were operating?

This would give a completely different % since the 88% quoted is based on the number of people speeding and takes no account of the volume of traffic on the roads.

For example, if I monitored a stretch of road for an hour and say 100 cars passed through and with the cameras turned on and lets say 95 vehicles were within the limit but after they were turned off only 90 were within the limit. Using their approach to statistics I could argue that the number of speeding motorists had gone up by 100% i.e. it had doubled from 5 in the hour to 10. But a more accurate way of looking at it would be that the number of speeding motorists was originally 5% of the traffic flow but now it is 10% of the flow only a 5% increase.

I can’t believe public sector bodies get away with publishing such utter rubbish. If you think about the volume of cars on these two roads over their 5 days survey it would be tens of thousands and so the difference is so slight it won’t be significant at all.

That and as BOOMER suggests -cherry picking of results ,as when they cherry picked the enforcement sites ,not for where the accidents happened(although how the expected to stop accidents by only taking action after the event is something we all can only wonder about).I did contact a local site to ask why I'd never seen a van on a particular road ,just before a notorious junction ,where I'd seen a lot of shunts ,only to be told that there was no history .

_________________
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

On another current thread, we've discussed how councils lie on directional road signs to satisfy locals who don't like through traffic, so mere misuse of stats is child's play to the public sector.

Yes, there is indeed the confounding factor of 'displacement', be it in reverse.

There are other even greater 'distortions' through percentages; check out this page (RTTM) and search this forum for the arguments of 'Bias On Selection' (campaign page under construction).

Oh, and I think you will like this site

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

And an erratum - to pablobaby ,and may your visits here be happy ones .

_________________
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

Thanks for the warm welcome

Any one listen to Jeremy vine this afternoon, Speaking about the switch off and speeders.
Funny how they avoid the question has anyone been injured but bet youre life had anyone been injured or god forbid killed it would have been "I told you so"
Click listen now 34 minutes into the show.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tcx33

_________________
nigel_bytes

We always welcome newbies who come with an open mind . ( And even will try to reason with those that cannot see that control of speed is not the solution to absolute road safety) .We won't try to bludgeon you into submission ,or else demand you're exit - we're a friendly lot , looking to use facts to educate ,and above all else pass on good driving standards . In case of problems -the mods ,I can assure you, do not bite .

_________________
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

Funny, their findings completely contradict my experience on the A34 last Friday (6th) where in the 50mph section of road, which skirts around Oxford, traffic was travelling at within 50 + 10% both in the morning and on my return journey in the afternoon.

I suppose that if they pick a road that has a limit not in keeping with the actual needs of the road then you can get the result you want. If I picked a country lane that was NSL I doubt if would get any vehicles exceeding it, but if I picked some of the ridiculously low 30 mph limits that have come about recently then I would expect a high level of non-compliance.