Safe Speed Forums

I sent this:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Freedom of Information Act Request
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:59:18 +0100
From: Paul Smith <psmith@safespeed.org.uk>
Organization: Safe Speed
To: DfT DfT <road.safety@dft.gsi.gov.uk>

Hi,

Please service the following request made under the Freedom of Information Act
2000.

I have been waiting with interest for the publication of a '4th year' report
of the speed camera hypothecation scheme.

You will be aware that the '3rd year' report was published on 15th June 2004:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 32515.hcsp

My questions are as follows:

1) Is there a 4th year report in preparation?
2) Who are the lead authors (organisations and individuals)?
3) What is the planned publication date?
4) If the report exists and has not been published, then I wish to see a copy.

The address for correspondence is:
Trace House,
Clay of Allan
Fearn near Tain
Ross-shire
Scotland
IV20 1RR

Please acknowledge this Freedom of Information request.

I would prefer to receive your reply in electronic form by email.
=========================================

They published this earlier today:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 039258.pdf

=========================================
Safe Speed issued the following PR at 15:09 today

PR219: A repeating pattern of error?

news: For immediate release

Following a freedom of information request the Department for Transport has
revealed that the authors of a new report into speed camera effectiveness are
the same as last year. But the DfT has just called a halt to speed camera
expansion apparently because they were not satisfied by last years' report.

Safe Speed wonders how they can have confidence in this years' report.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Last year's report was 115 pages, but I knew
that the content didn't justify the conclusions after just 15 minutes study. I
made every effort to inform people of the fact and after a long struggle
involving 'Questions in the House' it appears that the primary error source is
now being admitted."

That primary error is known as 'Regression To The Mean (RTTM)', and is a
pitfall extremely well known to statisticians. Consider the following sample
crash statistics:

Year KSI accidents

1997 1
1998 1
1999 1
2000 4
2001 1 camera installed
2002 1
2003 1
2004 1

The rules for camera placement require 4 crashes in a three year period. In
1999 we have only had three crashes so no camera is allowed. In 2000 we have a
bad year and when we get the year-end figures we can see that a camera can be
justified. So in it goes. The site then returns to its long term norm of 1
crash per year but the figures for the camera look like this:

* 3 years before: 6 crashes
* 3 years after: 3 crashes
* 'benefit': crashes cut by 50%

What's really happened here is that a random grouping of crashes triggered the
installation of the camera. The camera delivered no benefit but there was an
illusion of benefit when the number of crashes at the site returned to the
long term average.

"The trouble with RTTM is that you can get exactly the same effect by placing
a garden Gnome at the site." explains Paul, "Every motorist needs to
understand how the DfT used figures with an exaggerated benefit to misinform
the public. Every motorist needs to understand the regression to the mean
trick. And we all need to know how it was possible for a Professor of
statistics to make such a blunder. I REALLY want to know why they are using
the same authors for this year's report."

<ends>

Notes for editors:

MCN reports this week that the primary reason for the camera programme
moratorium is the RTTM error.

New document:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 039258.pdf

Last year's fiasco:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr126.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr127.html

Open letter to last year's lead author (which would have been highly libelous
if it wasn't true):
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/heydecker2.html

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

There isn't much fun in that is there?
All of the information requested is covered by an exemption Section 22, Information intended for publication.
Keep sending similar requests and you will come under Section 14, vexatious or repeated requests, especially when you place them under FOI Fun!

What are you on about?

Paul made a valid FoI request and the recipients answered it in full. What on earth has this got to do with either of your alleged exemptions?

The "fun" part is simply what is revealed by the information...!

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Really? Did you read the questions? And the answers?



I have absolutely no doubt that the Information Commissioner would disagree with you. It's not in my nature to make 'vexatious' requests.

However I will expose the lies on which your employment is based.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

JJ=

Paul I have e-mailed you the whole last 10 years deaths by county to play with.

Since I've been NIP'd I've been quite interested at checking some the stats my local safety camera partnership keeps refering to because I simply don't believe them.. they claim a 60.7% reduction in accidents at all camera sites (which seems almost miraculous!), and refuse to discuss the matter further.

I have asked for the data this figure is based upon, and have been told the data analyst for the partnership is on holiday.. how convenient... still haven't heard anything after a couple of weeks so I'm thinking of putting in a FOI request to the partnership.

The data I'd like to see is as follows:


Accident rates at camera sites for the 5 years pre-camera installation.
Accident rates at camera sites post-camera installation, upto the present.
The cause of each accident & road/weather condition at the time.
The number of Notice of Intended Prosecutions (NIPs) issued.
The number of NIPs ignored.
The number of NIPs sucessfully challenged.
The number of NIPs successfully prosecuted.
The revenue generated from each camera since installation.


I'll just wrap that up in the standard FOI request letter robbed from here

I was just wondering if anyone has any idea whether I'll actually get this data, and what valid reasons they might have for refusing to service my request ?

Regards

My local scamerati claim a 43% reduction is fatal and serious accidents and this is how they did it.

Remove any camera (from the data) that has not had less accidents post installation than before and declare that you have excluded these due to opperational reasons.

hide rising fatalities by combining them with slightly reducing injury counts to give a combined figure. e.g. fatalities could increase by 30% and other injuries decrease by 2% to give a reduction in fatal and serious injuries.

Carry out extensive engineering to improve layouts and junctions at camera sites (but its the camera saving lives isn't it).

Do not baseline your stats with national trends
Do not baseline your stats with other roads
(which would go someway to compensating improved treatment and vehicle design).

And the latest trick was to count every individual vehicle occupant as a speed related casualty. i.e. fully loaded chav car hits oncoming mpv. thats not 1 speed related casualty or even 2 but 10 or more. They seem to be forgetting that the cause was the actions of 1 possibly 2 people.

They don't count Drunk driving casualties like this (actually they probably put that down to speed too).

Well, yeah, obviously. In the "Speed Kills" world if they hadn't been driving so fast they wouldn't have been pissed in the first place.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I beleive a suicide was counted as a speed related accident as the driver who hit the guy who'd jumped from the bridge was driving above the 40mph limit.

Now I'm now expert of newtons law, but I'd reckon a 70ft fall would result in an impact speed greater than 40 mph.

I thought that one of the accidents used to justify the M4 cameras was a person falling from a bridge onto the motorway - http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3261 as this was obviously the fault of a speeding driver.

I did a F.O.I. request for deaths by county over the part 10 years in excell format. I received my reply and have added some columns that highlight counties where things are getting worse.

It is Here! now some partnerships cover more than one county such as Thames Valley but there is a lot of them in the red. IE more dead than if they did nothing

If we can use these figures to publicse the fines collected and lives lost as a wasted opportinity and ask the partnerships they are doing wrong and what if any thing they plan to do differently.

Anton

Durham's casualty reductions are interesting. They appear to be at least as good as the average and considerably better than some of the others. Now I wonder how they managed to achieve that without a single fixed camera. Could be something to do with pro-active policing and drivers being able to concentrate on the road rather than the cameras, I suppose.

GW

I am working on combining that table with fixed penalty revenue income and building an earnings per death leage table of failing partnerships.

Another stat I think would be very usefull is the change in traffic density and use in roads adjacent to those in which cameras are fitted and any change in accident figures.

E.G. a route accross town has a camera installed. After installation, a parallel route sees an increase in traffic.Does this increase in traffic have a corresponding increase in accidents.

[quote="Shabba"]Since I've been NIP'd I've been quite interested at checking some the stats my local safety camera partnership keeps refering to because I simply don't believe them.. they claim a 60.7% reduction in accidents at all camera sites (which seems almost miraculous!), and refuse to discuss the matter further.

I have asked for the data this figure is based upon, and have been told the data analyst for the partnership is on holiday.. how convenient... still haven't heard anything after a couple of weeks so I'm thinking of putting in a FOI request to the partnership.

The data I'd like to see is as follows:


Accident rates at camera sites for the 5 years pre-camera installation.
Accident rates at camera sites post-camera installation, upto the present.
The cause of each accident & road/weather condition at the time.
The number of Notice of Intended Prosecutions (NIPs) issued.
The number of NIPs ignored.
The number of NIPs sucessfully challenged.
The number of NIPs successfully prosecuted.
The revenue generated from each camera since installation.


I'll just wrap that up in the standard FOI request letter robbed from here

I was just wondering if anyone has any idea whether I'll actually get this data, and what valid reasons they might have for refusing to service my request ?

Regards[/quote]


This is the laughable reply from Gerry Scarfe, S.Yorks Camera Partnership. It's worth noting that none of the figures referenced at "www.safetycamera.org" actually exist, so these answers are meaningless, note the "I don't understand written english" response to one fo the questions, very quaint.


1. Accident rates at camera sites for the 5 years pre-camera installation

Speed and red-light cameras have been in operation in South Yorkshire since the end of 1992. Additional speed cameras were installed with the formation of the Safety Camera Partnership on 1 April 2002.
Baseline 36 months collision data for the cameras installed from 1 April 2002 is shown on the web site www.safetycamera.org. Other data is not held by the partnership but may be obtained from the relevant local authority or the South Yorkshire Police (if records have been retained).

2. Accident rates at camera sites post-camera installation up to the present

The partnership is currently in the process of auditing all ‘baseline’ and ‘after’ data, which will be published in due course.

3. The cause of each accident & road/weather conditions at the time

This data is not held by the partnership but may be obtained from the relevant local authority or the South Yorkshire Police (if records have been retained).

4. Whether the driver was intoxicated with alcohol or drugs

This data is not held by the partnership but may be obtained from the relevant local authority or the South Yorkshire Police (if records have been retained).

5. How serious each accident was

Baseline 36 months collision data for the cameras installed from 1 April 2002 is shown on the web site www.safetycamera.org. Other data is not held by the partnership but may be obtained from the relevant local authority or the South Yorkshire Police (if records have been retained).

6. The number of people involved in each accident

This data is not held by the partnership but may be obtained from the relevant local authority or the South Yorkshire Police (if records have been retained).

7. Whether the road layout at camera sites has been altered/improved since the camera was installed.

Although this information is not generally held by the partnership, I am aware that this is the case at Upwell Street, Chesterfield Road and Burncross Road, Sheffield – Chesterfield Road camera already removed and Burncross Road camera awaiting removal.

8. The number of NIP’s issued

You do not state the dates for which you require this information. However, during the financial year 2003-04, 68,270 NIP’s were issued.

9. The number of NIP’s ignored

You do not state the dates for which you require this information and it is not entirely clear what you mean by the question. However we have interpreted it to mean “Offences where it has not been possible to identify the driver of the vehicle”. In 2004, there were 6491 NIP’s where this was the case.
10. The number of NIP’s successfully challenged

You do not state what you mean by ‘successfully challenged’ or the dates for which you require this information.


11. The number of NIP’s successfully prosecuted

By this do you mean the number of NIP’s that result in a Conditional Offer Fixed Penalty Notice being paid and the number of NIP’s that were prosecuted at Court?
The partnership does not have a record of the latter. The number of COFPN’s paid during the financial year 2003-04 (the last audited figures) was 48,864

12. The revenue generated from each camera since installation

Individual site information of this kind is exempted under Section 31, Freedom of Information Act 2000. Fine revenue from COFPN’s paid during the financial year 2003-04 (the last audited figures) was £2,931,840. The partnership does not have a record of the number or amount of fines imposed by the Courts.

13. The working of the 60.7% figure (reduction of KSI’s at camera sites)

Sum Of Before PICs Sum Of Before KSIs Sum Of After PICs Sum Of After KSIs Change in PICs Change in KSIs
1347 204 647 80 -52.0% -60.7%