Safe Speed Forums

Sorry, but your 'lowest common denominator and then some' argument is typical, well intentioned nonsense, and I would argue is the lazy, defeatist person's approach.

Incentives and rewards are the basis for learning and self improvement, and to treat everyone as an imbecile (in ANY circumstance) just in case they might be one removes the incentive for self improvement as one's skills and abilities will never be recognised and rewarded. I work in education, and if I had to follow that kind of approach to my lectures (ie. pitch the material below the level of who I perceive to be the least able student I may ever face) then I might as well just give up my job as I'd be doing a dis-service to the world at large (and we'd all be in the crapper in a decade or so).

There is scope for differentiation on the roads. It is just that in this politically correct world we live in these days it is seen as discriminatory against the unskilled, lazy and stupid to reward the skilled, able and clever. In fact, we are seeing precisely the opposite sort of discrimination at the moment - the dangerous, uninsured and expensive to trace driver is currently getting all the breaks at the moment.

It seems that we live in a society where one's only reward for being 'good' is avoiding punishment, and one is under 24 hour scrutiny because one is expected to be bad, and your proposal that we go to further lengths to 'track and trace wrongdoers' simply underlines that. Why not track and trace good-doers and reward them?? Oh, I forgot - you can extract money from "wrongdoers"......

It sounds like you have thought this through, then.



How would your proposed system of driving merit awards work? Would I get cash rewards from it? That would interest me. Please explain it. Or would I just be allowed to take bigger risks than other drivers, and get away with it because I have a “Blue Peter Badge”?



I would expect you to pitch your lectures at worst acceptable student on your course. If you don't, then why do you accept such students on your course, knowing in advance that they cannot make it? Is that not a waste of time for both of you?



Please explain how I can benefit from this. Who will make these decisions and what right of appeal is there? Please tell me more. It might work, if only you could spell out the nuts and bolts.



Please explain how cameras help dangerous, uninsured drivers. I would be interested. As I see it, by freeing up expensive policemen from radar duty, cameras help to find them.



This doesn’t seem coherent to me - do you like a reward system or not? If so, the reward for being 'good' is a license to drive (a form of Blue Peter Badge, which you advocate) and a tax rebate because the bad drivers cough up the dough. How do your proposals work?



Exactly, and this puts less pressure on the treasury to increase road duty, petrol tax and allows greater budgets for good causes, like health and education. That is how I understand your ‘merit’ system to work, unless you mean a direct cash-back from the government. I have no problem with that. Put road tax up to £500 per year, and give £350 bad as a rebate if you don’t get any tickets, is that what you mean? Although good drivers get a tax break already because the bad ones pay more, so what is your complaint, exactly?

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It is up to insurance companies to assess the risk. But, contrary to what everybody believes, I don't think it is right to heavily clobber up good drivers who blip over the limit. I believe that there has to be some penalty for drivers who break the law. For small offences, that should be a small penalty, and for big offences, that should be a big penalty. And the penalty should not be a flat fee, because that would let the toffs off, and they have it easy already.

So, if that is that is the basis, how does the old system of enforcement work? SafeSpeed advocates going back in time to when there were no roadside detectors, and just let the cops with speed guns and cars do the enforcement. He thinks that cops have got the common sense to discriminate against dangerous boneheads, and safe but slightly fast but otherwise law-abiding retired bank managers on their way to the bowling green. OK, I can see his point, but underneath this was another principle. Basically, in the old days, fines and points were dished out in a heavy way. This is because the risk of getting caught was small, and an example had to be made of the ones that did get caught. This I call calculated justice, e.g.

Punishment = Gravity of Offence / Chance of Detection

For example, if the Gravity of Offence = 5 out of 10, and the Chance of Detection is 5 out of 10, the Punishment would be 5/5 = 1 unit. But, if the Gravity of Offence = 5 out of 10, and the Chance of Detection is 1 out of 10, the Punishment would be 5/1 = 5 units.

Thus, if you were unlucky enough to get caught, you got walloped to make an example of you. This makes the deterrence effect the same, even if there is a low chance of detection.

Now that everybody is getting caught all the time, it is not necessary to dish fines and points so heavily – a progressive approach can be taken, depending on how much over the limit(s) you were. The punishment might be a fine dependent on your disposal income and assets, so that the toffs get it in the neck as well as the little guys, which is fair. In fact, I’d add a bit to the toffs bill to make them less smug!



It’s your fumbled treatment that made them like this in the first place!

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Basingwerk

As you are in the know, and have a vested interest in the kinds of systems you are putting forward, could you give me some rough figures for how much it would cost to set up and run, along with any cost savings that may accrue?

Doesn't have to be super accurate. Are we talking, millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions?

And also, can you tell me what the primary objective of such systems would be? Would it be to reduce road casualties, or just catch drivers breaking the law or what?

Ta.

It is only foolish to rage against cameras if they are indeed 'for our own good'. Technology in our lives is inevitable when it is wanted and accepted. Mobile phones are wanted, computers are wanted etc. The reason we want a particular technology is because we think it brings a 'benefit' worth paying for. The reason we accept a particular technology is because it can be shown to us that 'it is right' and 'it is for the common good'. The reason we reject it is when we find out that it is ineffective or worse - damaging. This is the central argument - the speed cameras in their current incarnation may well be ineffective/counter-productive and a proper, scientific, independent evaluation is needed of their overall effectiveness. Most here, including IG, probably will concede that if speed camera were a sufficiently sophisticated device to be more-cost effective than a trained traffic copper then his days would be numbered. Sure, one day we will have such clever devices and they will cost less than a police officer. At the moment, the speed camera is dumb and expensive. To make it pay for itself they are having to put these things in the wrong places and set the detection threshold too low to be able to differentiate between responsible driving to conditions and dangerous speeding.

To be wanted or accepted, a technique must satisfy these criteria:
- it is not technology for the sake of technology and it serves a sufficiently useful purpose, e.g. for safety or for making fairer estimates of insurance risk, or it is perceived to improve our lives
- where there is reason to believe it is potentially damaging or counter-productive it must be shown by scientific methods that this is not so
- the economic argument for using it is sound, i.e the money is not better spent elsewhere (diminishing returns etc)
- it is adopted via a genuinely democratic process
Occasionally techniques are adopted and then rejected because one of the criteria above are not satisfied. When it comes to speed cameras, I see problems/potential problems with all of the above. The general gist of what is mostly said on this site is not that 'any automated devices must not be used for speed enforcement' but rather that 'speed enforcement by dumb automated devices does not appear to have a positive net benefit', or in my case 'the jury is out'.

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It's all about money for you BW, isn't it! No wonder you have such an affinity for the speed camera
I hear in Italy drivers start off with 'merit points' on their license and points get taken off for traffic violations. Points also get re-credited if the driver does not make any new violations within a certain period of time, something like 6 months. Coupled with sensible policies for detecting violations this system stands a good chance, don't you think. Unless it's all about cash to the Italians, too.. but hang on, points probably mean cash for carefull or occasional drivers if they are a useful indication of insurance risk.

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BW, you don't sell 'Socialist Worker' outside Mandela House by any chance? Only kidding! It's supposed to be about road safety, not wealth re-distribution, isn't it. Most people, even toffs, are proud of their 'clean license' and their qualifications, not how much cash they've got in their wallet. I think..

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Let's see. How about earning the right to drive a larger-engined car, or to a reduction in insurance premiums? Hmm, thinking about the latter, doesn't that already occur with schemes like PassPlus and IAM... It's not about money, it's not about being allowed to drive in a more risky manner, it's not about being able to "get away" with anything. It's simply about recognising an individual drivers desire to improve their own abilities, and to reward them in some tangible way for doing their bit to make the roads safer for ALL road users.

But this slams right up against your lowest common denominator way of thinking, doesn't it...





I seem to recall from my days as a student that the best lectures were the ones that, whilst generally pitched at a level that all of us could follow to some extent, still threw in enough more challenging titbits for the more able students. If you just teach the entire class at a level the least-able student can follow, not only do the more able students die of sheer boredom, but that least-able student isn't given ANY incentive to push themselves to improve.

Also, you make it sound as if passing a course is simply a PASS/FAIL scenario. Generally speaking it isn't. Yes, there's a clearly defined point below which you've failed and above which you've passed, but there is still a difference between scoring enough to just pass and scoring enough to put yourself at the top of the class. So it's entirely possible for a class to be comprised of students who all have the ability to pass, but who don't all have the ability to pass at the same standard. If you were a teacher, would you be happy if all the students you taught only achieved a minimum pass grade, or would you be happier if at least some of your students achieved higher grades?





Unfortunately that's not how most of us, INCLUDING the police themselves, see it. What we see is the replacement of a highly trained flesh and blood traffic cop with a yellow box of electronics. The claimed benefits of freeing up police personnel for other duties simply isn't happening, except perhaps in a minority of areas that pro-camera people like to think are representative of the country as a whole.

So yes, the uninsured, untaxed, drunk, drugged, unlicenced, unroadworthy-vehicle-driving, but with enough smarts not to break the speed limit, drivers are absolutely LOVING the current pro-camera approach to road policing. And the evidence is all around us - just keep your eyes open next time you're out on the road, see how many vehicles you can spot that are

* belching out clouds of smoke
* have faulty lights
* look as if they've driven straight off a scrapheap
* have broken/missing number plates
* are being driven in a manner which will not cause a scamera to trigger, but which represents a far greater danger to all other road users than a 10%+2 blip over the speed limit by someone driving a well maintained, taxed and insured vehicle, who doesn't treat the road as their personal playground and expects everyone else to make way for them

Now see how many traffic police patrols you spot on that same drive, and how many of the aforementioned vehicles you see being pulled over...


I live in the Thames Valley, and although I know that there are still traffic police patrols happening *somewhere* in the area (the local trafpol base is just a mile or so along the road, and they drive right by us on the way to the motorway or into town) when I'm actually out using the regions roads I have more chance of seeing one of the local Talivans than I do a traffic police car. So yes, personal experience tells me that it's only the speeding motorist who's in any real risk of being caught, and the maniacs who genuinely do make using the roads a misery for the rest of us are to all intents and purposes given the freedom to do as they please. Not because the police can't be bothered to catch them, but simply because they don't have the resources to put more patrols out there on the roads.

I can't knock that idea. The thing about this network zeitgeist we seem to be in is that it leads to convergence. Tellies morph into home theatre monsters of technology with real-time movie downloads, massive flexible recording capability, multi-speaker sound systems and Internet connected multi-use. Some of this is good, and some of it is bad. It could even be the case that (costs included) much of it is bad, but the little bit that is good means you get the rest for nothing, so to speak. That is the thing - if we wanted to implement identity systems (as Blunkett does), this will mean single primary key databases, which will mean data links between them all. If that came to pass, DVLC will be hooked onto that, as will the road-usage monitoring/number plate scanner systems. In other words, some good stuff will come, and a lot of (cost-wise) bad stuff will come along as excess baggage. That's how it works. Now the tipping point for smart highways is fast approaching. You have brought to my attention insurance deals with monitoring boxes, and we all know about the DB hookups for congestion charging. Convergence is happening at a fast rate. We may get side-benefits that should not be cost-effective on their own, but become so once costs from individual minor function points are largely removed due to the large scale of the necessary work for the major function points. Having said that, there may be some side-disbenefits, which are a bad thing even when the costs are removed! Undoubtedly, some will claim that scameras fall in there.



As I think that they work already, I'd be prone to disagree there, but even if you are right, and the infant technology we have now is marginally less effective (costs included) than the older methods, I'd still advocate their use, with certain modifications and operational changes to bring them up to and above the older standards, on the grounds that any emerging technology needs bedding in time, and that costs will fall due to the reuse/convergence factors mentioned above.



Those are the operational modifications I am alluding to. That is not tolerable and I would campaign for proper siting.



Or to show promise that they will be so in the near future (my fallback position).



Indeed the jury is still out. All I ask is to give the jury the time to make the right decision, which is (in my opinion) to use technology (in whatever flavor) to do the easy work and let the coppers to non-mundane work. We will go down some technological dead-ends (although I don’t think this is one of them) on the way, but the overall objective is right on target.

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I'm looking for a way to make the punishment as unpleasent for toffs as it would be for, say, hairdressers, dentists or baggage handlers for example (I have nothing against dentists, hairdressers or baggage handlers).

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well, you’ve asked from my opinion, and I'll give it a quick go. If we suggest that a reliable, single primary key multi record identity system is <furious thinking and scribbling of lots of numbers> around 500 million to implement, and 20 million a year to operate, we can then get rid of DVLC database operations, passport database operations, Inland Revenue database operations, Immigration database operations, births and deaths database operations, Police National and Local database operations, Educational Authority database operations, NHS database operations, customs and excise database operations, congestion charging database operations, etc .etc yielding <furious thinking and scribbling of lots of numbers> a break even point in 30 months. From then on, net savings of 200 mil per annum.

The primary objective of such systems would be the elimination of duplication, with a commensurate gain in government efficiency, and lower costs.

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Condolences - mate.

Since any such system would be most likely to be outsourced to either EDS, UNISYS, Cap Gemini. Sema, Syntegra all of whom are responsible for the major f**k ups in governmental computing over the last few years you need to multiply your numbers by a factor of five and allow an implementation time of 30 or so years durting which time we will have a parrellel systems approach similar to NATS' Swanage disater.

The ability to screw up IT projects is legendary

Still think we could get around this by using ADIs and a graded assessment programme. We could implement this quickly for new drivers, but admit a hard sell to Joe Public would be like climbing the Eiger...(as the wife puts it;))

The training does not mean you take bigger risks - simply that skills are enhanced, thus reducing the accident risk by some significant factor.



The teachers in this family (one of the Swiss mob (SickofScamfarce) and one of my own sisters) both say they aim lesson at "middle" - but have some modifications in lesson plan to reach dimwit and challenge Smart Alec.

However, I would say - with proliferation of A grades knocking around - it is admissions' office's nightmare. Speaking personally, lot of medical students have not really got the ability from my professional judgement of their abilities when I have the nightmare of taking them with me on my rounds... My wife has had to recruit from abroad just recently. No offence to young Mike intended - we know he stands out from quality of his posts alone Hope you got required result, Mike! We have relative's youngster due to start at Oxford in the fall.




Basingwerk - you know as well as we all do there has been "dumbing down" of society. When all universities are now faces with having to set an entrance exam just to decide amongst proliferation of "excellence".. Humans do not evolve brain power at this rate of knots. They are allowed to take books into exams these days. OK - so the exam I took and Wildy took - memory tests to certain extent. But even so, memory and logical argument based on what you remember reading is sign of inherent intelligence. (MikeF has always come across to me as "timeless" outstanding youngster and a credit to youth today - so I am sure he will not be offended by this comment)

On the roads - it amounts to same thing. I do not get that much of reduction for having a RoSPA gold thingy, nor does Wildy. However, if either of us (indeed, any member of either Wildy's highly intellectual family or my own bright (but not genius) family (who are all odd bods - IAM/RoSPA - male and female alike) stray even marginally above speed limit - those little Hitlers in the Scamships will issue NIP regardless of the abilities on the road. We get discount on insurance - but we pay for membership and "assessments" - so saving is "zero" in real terms. Thus - we are not rewarded for taking troube to ensure our safety. The only real benefit we get is "personal peace of mind" that we have tried to minimise the risk to selves and others by own efforts.



Think IG is better qualified to answer this than I am. From conversations I have with him face to face - think his guys manage to do good job without relying on cams.



The bench book guide alone speaks volumes. Politically correct society runs scared of upsetting "the so-called needy" but will hammer the ones it can rely on to be "decent and cough up the fine whether guilty or not. (M4 fiasco comes to mind here...)

A bit like comment I heard re the exam results "Teachers cannot be trusted. we have to tell them what to deliver curriculumwise!"

My kids are educated at inedependent school. I have had words about standard and what I expect in the past.

I do not trust the government and they do no trust me either. A decent society has to have some mutual trust to survive.

Ouch - That cuts!

I try my best - but Nanny state knows best ...

Unacceptable. The proponents of speed cameras are now at the 'the medicine hasn't worked, so we need a bigger dose' stage. From 1993 till a few years ago cameras were allowed to be sited pretty much where the people operating them wanted to put them. The drop in fatalities on Britains roads started to stall. ACPO guidelines came along to ensure cameras were targeted "where they were needed" - fatalities started to rise. Now they want the guidelines relaxed again - so we can go back to the previous stall or on to something worse?? The only thing automated detection has shown promise with is the propensity to raise revenue - a laudable and credible goal if it is also coupled with IMMEDIATE safety benefit, but that hasn't been the case for 11 years now. Indeed, the opposite looks to be the case....



Sorry, but often the objective is not the result that you get. How many people remember the government information films of the '60's and '70's that showed a future where everyone had more leisure time thanks to automation?? The reality has been that people are simply expected to create often unrealistically increased productivity in the same amount of time.

All automated detecion of crime has produced is the anticipation of the partnership operators to be able to redirect budgets towards nice new offices or even more revenue raising equipment, plus an excuse to cut down on more effective crime prevention methods for crimes which ultimately don't impinge on their direct revenue streams.

As I said above, it is reward and incentive that encourages people to keep going with an idea, and it is the employees and beneficiaries of the camera partnerships who are being rewarded the most and driving the process forward - for their selfish ends and with no substantiable collateral benefit for the rest of us.

Seriously? You think we can get rid of all those systems for £500 million? I admire your optimism. £20 million a year to operate? Again, optimistic.

I'd say it would cost several hundred million just to work out how you would migrate several mission critical systems like that to one new one. And that's just on paper, never mind actually doing it.

£20 million a year to operate? what's that? Standard operational costs or are you including capital costs for replacements/repairs etc?

For example, the Inland revenue systems alone have eaten up several billion pounds and still don't work properly. Why should this system be any different?

As for the primary objective - haven''t you been saying all along how this stuff will improve saftey? On a road safety site after all. Now that it comes down to it the objective is something a little less commendable - elimiation of duplication. A worth goal I'll grant you but several billion pounds and a complete elimination of the right to privacy to achieve it? No thanks.

Cost, safety and speed are all tied up into a classic engineering 3 way tradeoff of cost/performance/quality. In simplified terms, in the static system, if you want more speed, you need more cost and/or less safety. If you want less cost, you get less safety and/or less speed. If you want more safety, you get more cost and/or less speed.

One way to make it cost less and get the same level of safety or speed is to change the system to improve efficiency. And suddenly, elimination of duplication becomes just as commendable as the other parameters! My argument is coherent because cash saved through efficiency improvements could be used to improve either safety or speed levels, or a bit of both. I think you know where I would prefer the savings to be spent.

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And I think you know that the savings would not be spent on either.

Just as we have the current line that "speed cameras will free up cash to plough into catching those with no insurance, licence etc etc" when in fact the number of trafpol is falling like a stone.

Like I said, I admire your optimism.

Interested to know which government IT cock-up you attribute to Capgemini? We've only just taken over the Inland Revenue account so haven't had time to screw up big-time there yet.

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