Safe Speed Forums

Richard, that's FALSE and really rather offensive. I repeat my earlier request. If you have found something wrong, let's hear about it specifically.

I do know you mentioned the fatality page. I can see how you misunderstood what it was supposed to be saying, and for that I take responsibility. I will make a couple of minor revisions for the sake of clarity. But allow me to assure you that you did NOT find a logical fallacy - what you found was only an opportunity for misunderstanding.

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

Why do you appear to have a problem with camera detectors? As Wildy pointed out to several posts ago - a useful tool as their detection is a bonus feature. For recored - the manufacturer installed sat navesystem which came with my new private family car gives cam site locations to me

I really have no issue with these so long as person is driving safely,at all times , relatively legally on aggregate (or to within our tolerance margins which are 10% + not saying but we do issue fines

Now you want to know why we say speed cameras have no impact on velocity?

How long you got? My patch has police on patrol more or less all the time. Our public have no idea where we may be - only that there is a danger we are lurking somewhere and generally - we have an overall fairly good compliance with the law as a result. \We have our accidents - and we do issue fines here - so do not run away with the idea that just because Durham has not gone down a fixed camear route - it's any "softer". Our difference perhaps lies in the way we deal with the speeders and are judged to be firm but fair by our customers!

However, I go into Cleveland in the South or Northumberland to to North.. and see people driving around at 10 mph above a speed limit, shave down to required limit when they see the markings or the box and then speed up again afterwards. Not my idea of "compliance" - do't know about you or your driving but if you complacently tell me you never speed - I shall point out to you that you do - but you have not been caught yet and either been lucky enough to pass a camera which has not been switched on (as some are not always "live" ) or were "borderline" Now "borderdline" would not have me sniffing around you - unless I suspected you had emerged from a nearby watering hole A speed camera would fine you though!

So add daft overtaking practices, tailgating, use of mobile phones, driugs, drink, prescription drugs and even mental illness and depression/ stress into all this, depleted patrols and we start seeing the free for all and "Me first selfish p:censored:k on road that we are starting to see in ever increasing numbers.

So you continue to see forests of speed cams with roys tinted glasses - I shall continue to see them for what they really are: something which measures a speed for about one half second but does nothing to improve that driver's skill or attitude!


As for siting and justifcations - from Norfolk Cam Site 5 - A149 - scene of recent tragedy whereby driver shaved 10 mph off speed to compy , was rear ended by car too close to stop and which bounced into on-coming ambulance Let's look at one "netty accedited example" lifted straight form Norfolk's Road Safety Project site...

[quote]

The A149 between King's Lynn and Hunstanton is very busy throughout the year. The camera at Heacham is in a 50 mph limit on approach to Norfolk Lavender junction. The junction is an offset crossroads of individual design. Vehicles entering teh junction form Heacham often have a long wait for traffic. It is more difficult to join the A149 on the other routes out of Heacham becasue [i[ there is no central reserve at the other junctions [/i] The camera enfporces the speed limit on the approach to the Norfolk Lavender Junction. [b] Whilst speed is very seldom the primary cause of collsions on this stretch - the camera serves a valuable purpose in reducing severityu of collisiosn [/i]

Um - we are talking of FIFTY MILES PER HOUR HERE! HOW? Had it been 30 mph - perhaps - but we are talking of fairly high speed at approach to a cross roads and no way is a T-bone at compliant speed going to be "minor injury"

Site was a blackspot before the partnerhsip per the blurb - but it begs the question why a camera and not traffic lights, central reserve or roundabout to iron out the obvious danger on this stretch. Cost to NHS, erection of camera and maintenance rather offset cost of the engineering here. Now - they claim 12 collisions and 7 KSI at this site pre-cam and 11 collisons but no KSI post cam and 85th percentile speed recording of 46 mph. What they do not mention is that road was 60 mph pre-cam as well - 98-01 and even then - some of the impact may have been absorbed by better crumple zones as well - so it may not just be a cam effect on this one - but combination of slowing for the yellow box and improved engineering on car panels. But either way - 11 collisions should not be occurring and in any case - camera has not resolved the problem, and one of those collisions has resulted in two deaths and one SI at this site in one fell swoop.

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

While Monbiot bathes in his own smugness at having revealed the key flaw in Paul Smith's case, a trickle of posters have dripped in here adding their thinly veiled demands that Smith should 'put up his ideas for peer review in an academic journal OR shut up'. But this isn't an attack on Smith's ideas; it is an attack on Smith himself, or more to the point, on his credibility. But it has no substance. Smith is not presenting an academic and scientific case. Paul Smith has reviewed the literature and is asking questions like:

Why, if safety cameras save lives, have their proliferation not been accompanied by a fall in casualties?

Why, if current roads policy is effective, has the previous downward trend in road traffic fatalities begun to level off?

What is the benefit to society of fining millions of drivers for minor transgressions of the speed limit? Is there perhaps a disbenefit?

And, why aren't the policymakers asking themselves the same questions?

Paul Smith's freethinking, open-minded and ongoing considerations of these questions and others are here on this site for anyone to read, review and comment upon as they wish. It is not a piece of research for the sake of research and academic kudos; it is a campaign. Paul Smith is campaigning for his questions to be discussed and debated and ultimately researched and considered by policymakers. He is campaigning for other road safety measures to be considered. He is not making his case to the cloistered world of academia; he is making his case to the media, the public, and the policymaker. As such he is more the 'rabble rouser' as someone suggested, than the deluded crank alluded to by another. The ‘peer review’ question is a mere smoke and mirrors trick in an attempt to discredit Paul Smith and to expose him as a pseudo-scientist and a crank. He should avoid being drawn into this trap. The lack of cogent challenge to Paul Smith’s ‘SafeSpeed’ arguments suggest the reason he is being attacked is that Safespeed has been allowed to become inextricably associated with petrol-headed libertarian extremists insomuch that it invites general criticism from those quarters opposed to such views.

So - why don't you say which bits of the boiler need tinkering with. So far you have not offered anything tangible as to your gripe other than theree is an advert for a useful gadget on the site. and seem to place all your faith in George Monbiot - whose tirade on both You and Yours on R4 and against Clarks on over the infamous 4x4 on the Scottish Mountain just drew derision from the listening public. - and nope they were not posters on PH or here either

Who reads these reviews really and who takes noteof them? Cos I dd not note this government taking note of experts in the field when they dragged us into a Gulf War - but played to the camera over Mrs Thingy form Warrington and her epic wait for a hip replacement as voting public before an election wanted to see our lovely PM doing something "constructive" and it's a sure vote winner!

Basically mate - If Joe Public makes it plain and Joe Public with Paul and the tabloids must have made some in-road as "fine cash is to fund road engineerrng, a few more and not be invested solely in more cams from late 2006 - then voting power and not peer review will i bed more nfliuential on policy decisions




Richard - Wildy's a SHE and SHE is MY cousin She happens to be a very able bio-chemist and a qualified doctor - well respected in her field and her husband is a leading virologist - I think they know more about lurgies and vaccines than either of us know.

By the way - their work is "peer reviewed" fairly often but I don't think it makes them any better or less qualified than a doctor who has not published an "epic"

She's Swiss but her point was - if I understand her - was that vaccinating against last year's lurgy may lessen the effects of the current strain - but does not prevent the onset of the illness nor necessarily weaken it - and speed cams? We are treating one strain of a disease but the disease has moved from speed in itself to downright bad driving.

If you are suggesting she's a witch - can only assume you read one of her funnies on the PH site

.


Perhaps - somehow I think physically pulling our customers and reading the riot act has far longer lasting effect than an automated fine at 4-5 mph above the posted - which causes a "Them and us" festering resentment. I look at our record and stats and compare with similar sized force servingf simlar type area - and I take heart that we have a fairly good and consistent record of keeping it relatively safe here and we still try to reduce it..

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

After five pages of debate, I think it's appropriate to revisit the start of it all. Here's the original post in full with comments added.



Let's get that part exactly in perspective. On 17th January 2005 I sent this email:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Accident Analysis and Prevention
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 07:43:54 +0000
From: Paul Smith <psmith@safespeed.org.uk>
Organization: Safe Speed
To: re@toi.no

Dear Rune,

I understand you are editor of Accident Analysis and Prevention. I'm a UK road
safety campaigner with an engineering background. I have carried out thousands
of hours of work on road safety science, originally investigating the UK
government's case for the widespread introduction of speed cameras. You may
have come across my work via contact with Professor Mervyn Stone.

I have identified dozens of serious inadequacies in the current state of road
safety science. Much of my work is already published on the Safe Speed web
site, but I believe that the time has come to bring it directly to the
attention of the scientific community.

Can you provide any guidance or assistance for articles to be submitted for
publication in AA&P? Would you accept articles from me?

I have had no previous involvement in academic publication.

--
Best Regards,
Paul Smith
Safe Speed

web: http://www.safespeed.org.uk
---------------------------------
promoting intelligent road safety


And I got this reply:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: SV: Accident Analysis and Prevention
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 06:31:31 +0100
From: "Rune Elvik" <re@toi.no>
To: "Paul Smith" <psmith@safespeed.org.uk>

Dear Paul Smith,

Accident Analysis and Prevention welcomes any paper that takes a critical look
at road safety research. I believe myself that much of it is inadequate and in
need of improvement.

I attach some guidelines for authors that I hope may be of interest.

If you wish to submit a paper, please go to the following website, register as
a user, and then, following the assigment of a password, login as author and
follow the instructions given:

http://ees.elsevier.com/aap/

Kind regards
Rune Elvik

I examined the requirements for publication and recognised that the expected format was significantly demanding in terms of hours. Since then I have cast about for assistance and agreed on 8th December 2005 to work with two other people to create papers for scientific publication based on Safe Speed work.



No, Richard, it is not. Neither acceptance not rejection for publication would prove anything at all. Being 'taken seriously' arises when information proves robust to wide ranging challenges. And I am being taken seriously.



'Lack of time' is a somewhat light statement of the true position. In truth, I suppose, like any activity, it's a question of balancing opportunities against benefits, and urgency against importance. It's been my judgement that I should not abandon day to day work to prepare papers for publication because other things have been more urgent and important to the campaign objectives. And so it remains.



I give you my word - here and now - that I'm not in the least little bit 'fearful of exposure'. If I was I wouldn't be throwing out 'debate challenges' to all and sundry. If I was I wouldn't have given up well paid work to do this thing. And I wouldn't have emailed AA&P asking about publication. The 'fearful of exposure' claim is libel because it is false.



The threat of closure passed when some amount of money - £10k? - was raised.

The point about scientific publication has been answered above.



I have never 'refused'. The methods are entirely open to independent scrutiny.

And the general point is that scientific publication is still far from the top position in the list of daily priorities - and rightly so. The whole argument surrounding peer review is both a dead duck and a red herring.

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

Quite. If I open a shop selling fags and solvents next to a primary school, and a week later all the kids start smoking fags and sniffing solvents, I take responsibility for that whether I've put a big sign up in my window or not.

The "data" and arguments that Mr Smith produces is widely circulated amongst groups who's activities and attitudes on the public roads I suspect would frighten most right minded people here, and are directly used to legitimise those activities. Yet that data and those arguments are riddled with elementary faults.

While you portray Paul Smith as some sort of Robin Hood figure (with which, to a certain extent, I agree), it is nevertheless not quite good enough a defence of sloppy methods. The British Lawn Tennis association could live with a mistake in which two variables which have changed at the same time is presented as conclusive evidence that one has changed because of the other. The driver at the wrong end of one of the lunatics inspired by one of these potential fallacies literally cannot.

There is no attempt to draw Mr Smith into a trap. Qualitative arguments and quantitative arguments are different. Quantitative arguments tend to be stronger and more convincing, but "cost" more in terms of the effort that their owner is obliged to expend to demonstrate their validity.

If Mr Smith's intention is not, as you say, to present an academic and scientific case then that is fine. He should withdraw the academic and scientific material and pursue his argument in qualitative terms. This is a fine and noble tradition.

If, on the other hand, Mr Smith wishes to enjoy the benefits that accrue from an academic and scientific approach (which, despite your protests to the contrary, appears to be the case) then he can't simply choose not to have his academic and scientific work peer reviewed. That would be an attempt to have his cake and eat it.


Yes they are. And in this form, it is apparently sufficient for Mr Smith to declare "I'm offended!" and "You have disqualified yourself from participating in this debate!" to end any serious challenge. I personally am waiting from post to post to learn whether I have been banned or not, which hardly inspires me to invest any great effort in my review and commentary. (Indeed, he seems cheerfully oblivious to the impression created by his practice of boasting of an absence of any serious opposition one minute, and issuing fatwahs against those who would oppose him the next).

The simple proposition that has been put to Mr Smith is that he has the academic and scientific material reviewed by independent experts. Mr Smith's response is that that those self-selecting SafeSpeed group members who survive the peer pressure process will do it while Mr Smith selects the academics of his choosing to review his papers.

I would submit that that is not a satisfactory response to a subject that concerns itself with a life and death topic.

It is unfortunate that data in this site has been seized upon by Motorists Against Detection but having seen Captain Gatso talking to Fiona Bruce on Real Story Mr Gatso is clearly an idiot with no sense of logical thought. The same can not be said for Paul who appears as a rational human being who is merely asking a different set of questions. He is not asking for no detection, quite the contrary, he is asking for traffic police by the bucket load to enforce laws rather than cameras that just enforce one law in one place at one time if they're switched on and have film in.

Like you, I used to think speed cameras were great and were the answer because the government said so, and a few journal articles said so. They also appeared to reduce deaths and injuries in the first instance. Sadly it appears this isn't the case and they actually do very little when all factors are taken into consideration ie traffic flow variation, improved safety trends and regression to the mean. Many of the peer reviewed reports that supported cameras missed one or more of these factors off when looking at before and after accident rates so their conclusions cannot be considered valid.

Rich - you fixation with quantitative evidence is dangerous. Purely quantitative analysis is appropriate and rigorous in some fields but not so in areas where there are numerous "soft" factors affecting what is being measured. So, for example, you may well have accurate figures of accidents at a given location, but the identification of causal factors, is of neccessity, dependant on (albeit expert) human judgement and interpretation.

Therefore whilst the statistical methods employed might well be sound, the best that they can ever do is indicate that a given postulation is reasonable or unreasonable - that is highly valuable of course, but if influencing factors are overlooked or wrongly interpreted, conclusions from statistical analysis can still be wrong. Social scientists are well aware of this and use a mixure of respected qualitative and quantative methods as a result.

As I've already said, academic peer-review DOES add credibility to one's arguments, but is NOT the holy grail of "proof" that the likes of George Monbiot treat it as.

Here's an example from a reviewed paper which illustrates some of these points:

Here's an example from Mosedale, J. and Purdy, A., (2004) Excessive speed as a contributory factor to personal injury road accidents,Transport Statistics: Road Safety, Department for Transport.

No prizes for guessing the conclusions of the paper!

BUT it contains:

"The term excessive speed can be interpreted as meaning either excessive for the conditions/location or exceeding the speed limit. It is not possible to differentiate between these two aspects. Furthermore excessive speed is not easy to determine after the event and may be implied by other contributory factors such as driving too close, agressive driving, behaviour - careless, reckless, thoughtless and behaviour - in a hurry. The percentage of accidents in which excessive speed is explicitly cited as being a contributory factor might therefore underestimate its importance."

The gross assumption that lumping driving above the speed limit with other types of "excessive speed" is reasonable is highly contentious. A similar assumption in my own field would have attracted considerable flak (I hope at review).

Let me recap:







And you continue to not do so, yet


Given Paul’s prior responses, why would you say that? AA&P is Monbiot’s peer reviewer of choice, and Paul has already stated that preparation for publication and submission to these guys is already in progress. How is your original concern not answered?
The only thing you can now do is hold him to the publication – in proper time. By comparison, everything else is irrelevant and should be in a separate thread.



This is relevant and worth revisiting.

I assume you wish to be perceived as unprejudiced in this subject. If so, can I also assume you are chasing the DfT with the same vigour? (especially since your claimed credentials should allow you to understand the phenomenon of RTTM; have you read the 4th year report?)

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

I have seen no evidence of that. We don't seem to attract much in the way of 'boy racers'. If you have evidence, I'd like to see it.



This is important and I expect a proper reply. You are mistaken. No such problems exist in my Safe Speed work. You MUST either provide evidence to support your position or cease making the claim. It is FALSE.



All manner of approaches are required when examining road safety because it is a vast subject. So what?



If you're suggesting that qualitative analysis cannot be scientific you're mistaken.



I will set the best priorities I can, in the interests of the campaign. Scientific publication, as I've told you, does figure in those priorities.



About five posters have been banned over nearly two years. No one has been banned for diasgreement. There are some simple forum rules. The only way to get banned is to break them again and again. See:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewt ... 2225#12225

However, I must say the style of your arguments is dipping in and out of ad hominem and it would be far far better if you would stick to the issues.



That's entirely false. Look, Rich, invite ANYONE along.



<sigh>

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

Professor, I have no fixation with quantitive evidence. I have a fixation, if that is what you would call it, with logical consistency applied to a high standard. Have you not? Shouldn't Paul? I sense I am trespassing on both your - and my - patience when I repeat, for the third time, that the first stage of review is to check logic. This is a mechanistic stage that requires no subjective knowledge of the subject matter.

Please look again at this example of reasoning employed by SafeSpeed. I've [url=http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=59579#59579]invited
Paul[/url] to explain how he feels it is any different from a 'flu vaccinations kills people' argument.

To be absolutely clear: given the three distinctly different conclusions that can be drawn from any graph of two correlated variables e.g.

(1) that increasing road deaths has prompted the increased use of cameras,
(2) deaths and camera convictions have increased without any causal relationship or
(3) that speed camera convictions have caused the increased deaths,

- what his basis is for selecting option (3), and how whatever reasoning that was employed could not just as easily have been used to select option (1) or option (2), because there simply isn't sufficient data to decide and everything else is just the product of an a priori decision.

Would you accept it from one of your students? My professor would have hanged me if I'd tried to turn something like that in.

My point is not that no information exists that can prove the detrimental impact of speed cameras on road safety - there may or may not be. My point is that this is not it, the fact that this is not it can be trivially clarified by simple mechanical argument checking during the first stage of independent verification process, and until that is done any reasoning derived from it is meaningless.

Given how closely you identify yourself with the material you present, Paul, it is difficult to criticise one while avoiding the appearance of criticising the other (yet another weakness, I'm afraid, of the 'open review' approach). However, I'm sure you are able to differentiate between an argument that some of your reasoning is sloppy (which is legitimate), and an argument that you are sloppy, therefore so is your reasoning (which I have never made).

Except for one small problem - the advent of cameras preceded the increase in road deaths.

_________________
Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Well, SS is using correlation to compare data streams to ascertain whether a coincidental trend exists between the two which, as I understand it, is a perfectly acceptable method of academic investigation.
The graph presented in the link offers up such a suggestion, to me at least, i.e. that there is a link between the increase in cameras and the number of deaths on the roads. I can certainly relate the conclusion to my own experiences of witnessing inappropriate driver behaviour near cameras, behaviour that has led to the deaths of some of those involved.

Well Charles, or Ben, or whatever you call yourself this time, that is utter BS. I have also directly spoken to Linda Mountain and I can tell you her comment was with reference to the articles in the media (who did indeed quote her wildly out of context, I have the actual study and the original unedited press releases). Where applicable, Paul has always posted the full correspondence with Linda as proof of his work.


How ironic!



Can I assume this thread is not well and truly hijacked, while conveniently dodging the relevant points? Can we split this thread?

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

That user was banned over a year ago for making libellous comments. But like a bad penny it keeps turning up and getting banned all over again for the same offence. I would bother to reply. It's just a minor admin hassle.

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

No Rich. How many times?

The graph proves nothing except correlation. As you say. But, and it's a very big but, it was taken as providing corroboration of a previously postulated effect. No more and no less.

I have explained that you misunderstood. More than once now.

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

Sure. In those circumstances, expect plenty of lattitude where the edges blur. But please do your best to deal with the arguments.

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

It says, "If it were true that speed cameras cause an increase in road deaths, the data would look like this". Which is true.

It does not say "The data looks like this, therefore speed cameras cause an increase in deaths". Which is the issue.

Confusing the two, as is done in the text, is called "confirming an a priori decision".

In fact, it can offer mistaken confirmation of hundreds of different propositions because there are many hundreds of factors that are capable of producing the same data and therefore, of which, the statement "if [insert factor] were true, the data would look like this" would be true. This is the diagnostic reasoning flaw in most Single Issue enthusiast sites in general, and this one in particular.


As did mobile phones, crashbag induced reckless driving, etc., etc. See above.

Paul, here is the first link I checked on google that links to your site:

roadracers.co.uk

Take a good look at it. At the top is a picture glorifying an act of civil disobedience - the destruction of part of the country's road safety system.

Scroll down half a page, and the next image you see is this analysis of yours, under a quotation from you that "speed cameras must be removed from UK motorways as a matter of public safety".

In other words, we are looking at a site which is glorifying, inciting and justifying civil disobedience, using your material directly in support of its activities.

You are responsible for that information. You have detemined what information is and is not associated with the image that you have published on your site and which they have lifted. Nowhere on the data you have furnished this site with is there any indication that the graph "proves nothing except correlation", or indeed that before perpetrating the unlawful acts the viewer should evaluate a "previously postulated effect".

Instead, what they have is an unqualified time series graph labelled (incorrectly) "extra deaths / speed camera convictions x1000".

This is why I am concerned about your honesty and accuracy. If your site is a fag shop shop next to a school, this is the equivalent of fags that have been handed out without a single health warning other than to come and see the owner if the schoolboys want to see the health policy.

You need to take more responsibility than this for your work-in-progress.