Safe Speed Forums

Monomaniac of the year

This new award goes to Paul Smith the campaigner on speed cameras. For years he has bombarded everyone he can find on the inaccuracies of these devices and has been rebuffed by authority, but, as reported in The Times, the Ministry has at last climbed down. The resistance shown by the ministry was quite extraordinary and backed up by its own expert, one Benjamin Heydecker. When your bending author backed Smith’s contention about regression to the mean, it resulted in a letter from the Ministry, which also made efforts to prevent broadcasting of the BBC TV programme on the gross inaccuracies of the hand-held devices (in which your bending author was involved). When making the presentation, the baroness said that it should not be taken as an encouragement of such persons. How could the nation have a proper system of stealth taxes to fund its essential and growing administrative system if every Tom, Dick and Harry could challenge the scientific basis on which it is constructed?

December 2005 conains the following: