Safe Speed Forums

I have been reading the SafeSpeed web site and these forums for many months now without making too many posts (long time listener, first time caller) and I generally agree with Paul Smith’s case against current road safety policy. However, I have one major concern: if Paul’s campaign were to succeed, and the number of speed cameras on our roads were drastically reduced, I fear that the quality of driving on our roads would also be drastically reduced, at least in the short term, and with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Please allow me to clarify my concerns.

It has been stated by Paul on numerous occasions (and by the regular contributors to this forum) that an entire generation of drivers have been brainwashed into believing that “Speed Kills”. If this message was suddenly reversed and the level of automated detection was reduced, the same sheep that blindly followed the previous flawed message would assume that it is perfectly acceptable to drive at whatever speeds they deemed appropriate and to show flagrant disregard for all speed limits.

You may think that I am over-exaggerating this scenario, but what I believe experts like Paul fail to take into account is the entire generation of drivers who were taught to drive in the speed camera era (myself included, I passed my driving test at the first attempt in 1990) and, consequently, have not had the benefit of the type of sound advice that was given by the good people at Hendon in the dim and distant past (sorry, that was not meant to be a dig at you oldies out there!).

To summarise, I believe that there is a potentially disastrous knowledge gap between pre- and post-90’s trained drivers that could have a severe, negative impact on any change to the current situation. A solution to this problem is needed as a matter of some urgency.

_________________
If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

I think the safespeed rule, "They must always choose a speed that allows them to stop comfortably, on their own side of the road, within the distance that they know to be clear." ought to cover four fifths of that.

I think that in the initial days after the 'great policy change' (no doubt to be celebrated for decades to come with public holidays and much rejoicing ) quite a few people will take the piss, but that ought to calm down very quickly.

I'm not so sure any change would be as dramatic as you suggest. If so many drivers have truly been brainwashed into believing the "speed kills" message, then the presence/absence of a camera won't make the slightest difference - they'll continue driving according to the posted limit, because that's what they've been brainwashed into believing is safe.

I also think you're over-exaggerating the scope of the brainwashing effect - I passed my test in 1993, but it's only in recent years (1998ish and onwards) that I've noticed a change in my driving behaviour as a result of cameras. Before then, my experience of speed enforcement was that it remained well and truly in the hands of the traffic police - to be honest, I'm not even sure I was aware that speed cameras existed back then, so little was their impact on my life as a young driver... Certainly, anyone learning to drive in the last 5-6 years will have been affected by the change in road safety advice, but to suggest that this effect stretches out all the way to the start of the 90's? Not so sure about that.

Imagine this scenario:

A stretch of road that previously had a "Safety Camera" has that camera removed as a direct result of the SafeSpeed campaign. Along comes a numbnut boy racer at a completely inappropriate speed and wipes out a group of children waiting for the school bus.

Response? Complete outrage by the pro-camera brigade and an instant call to re-introduce all cameras. Paul's arguments would be completely drowned out.

I'm not saying it won't work, I just believe too little has been proposed on how Paul's beliefs would be implemented in the short term. We cannot propose a solution without stating how to implement it safely.

_________________
If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

Firstly, the likelihood of that scenario is probably tiny enough to be (almost) discounted.
Secondly, proper traffic policing (like we used to have in the BC years) would further decrease the likelihood.
Thirdly, the outcry (assuming it did happen) would be almost entirely due to the 'speed kills' mentality. What if it were generally accepted, for example, that garden gnomes prevented cancer, and someone contracted cancer after their garden gnome was stolen?

How many cameras do you know that are near where children wait for school buses? Not many.

And how many numbnut boy racers are actually licensed and insured?

As Pete317 said, a highly unlikely scenario. There are a number of locations around the country where cameras have been removed for various reasons and this hasn't happened yet.

You would probably start by removing them from high-standard dual carriageways and rural trunk roads where there are few if any pedestrians anyway, like this one:




I think this has been discussed in an earlier thread, although I'm not sure where. In reality, there would be no "big bang" as it would involve too much loss of face on the part of the authorities. There would be muttering about "refocusing road policing" accompanied by a low-profile process of removing a few cameras, turning others off and upping trigger thresholds on those that remained.

If the Safety Camera Partnerships were dissolved and responsibility for cameras returned to the police (with no opportunity to profit from convictions) there would be a rapid change of emphasis in the way cameras were used.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Imagine this scenario:

A stretch of road retains its camera. Along comes a numbnut boy racer at a completely inappropriate speed, driving a car with cloned/broken/dirty/missing plates, or a car which can't be traced back to them, and wipes out a group of children waiting for the school bus.

Response?


Cameras don't stop people speeding. If they did, we'd be seeing a decrease in the number of camera-based prosecutions. We're not.

Please understand, I fully support all of SafeSpeed's views on road safety policy. However, I still do not think we have adequately covered how these policies will be implemented. As you have mentioned above, the outcry will be from the "Speed Kills" brigade, but it will still be an outcry which the media will pick up on and will be used to undermine SafeSpeeds message.

I think this is something that needs addressing as I don't believe it has yet been covered adequately (perhaps it is a topic for the new Brainstorming forum).

_________________
If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

Ahh, interesting. I made this exact same point (albeit couched slightly differently) when I first started posting here and Pauls response was along the lines of "we'll have to trust them not to". Comments Paul?



Well thats certainly a valid observation, but it in no way addresses the points Serge was making. In fact, I'd take Serge's scenario one logical stage further and propose that sooner or later it would occur to someone to commence legal action against current anti-camera activists with a view to gaining compensation. I'm sure this will have occured to Paul as well. Has it?

No, and it wasn't intended to - that was the role of my earlier reply. This was simply pointing out that his scenario could also occur without the camera being removed, and I didn't think it was a particularly valid example with which to oppose their removal.

Sorry, but you are taking the 'compensation culture' idea a little too far. That is like suggesting the ant-smoking lobby may get sued by the tobacco industry for loss of income. If a pressure group's moves leads to a change in government policy then it is the government that is responsible for the changes.

I think PeterE has it spot on...



There wouldn't be a u-turn on policy accompanied by a ceremonious overnight removal of cameras, so I doubt serge's scenario will ever be played out in reality.

Moot debate.

I think people are misunderstanding my agenda, I am in no way opposing the removal of speed cameras. I'd just like a little more thought given to how this could be achieved without sending out the wrong signals to those motorists who know nothing but the "Speed Kills" message.

Most of us agree that speed cameras are not reducing accidents on our roads. Most of us agree that we should return to the road safety policies that made our roads the safest in the world.

My only concern is, once SafeSpeeds stance is accepted by the establishment, how will it be implemented? With the exception of PeterE, nobody has yet come up with any concrete ideas on how to address this issue.

_________________
If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

It's very simple. The message won't change instantly. It'll be enforcement policy that will change in the first instance, while the re-education process continues (we hope!!)

We are already in a situation where misinformation and misdirection is used to mislead drivers into certain belief and behaviour (eg. Cumbria and their 'double camera = double the points' bluff), so why expect that to change?

PS. Your scenario suggests that some form of effective safety measure is being removed, and disaster may ensue. The reality is that speed cameras are having no positive effects on road casualties, and in all probabilities are having a secondary detrimental effect on road safety, so we should expect things to get better, not worse!!

Lets also remember that we're talking about small percentages here. The negative effects we have identified as being attributable to the deployment of cameras are causing changes to the road accident stats in the order of a few percent. It is not the case that a camera goes up and suddenly everyone drives with a fixed stare at the speedo - this is just a claim that the pro-camera have falsely attributed to us.

So in reality, cameras have had a deleterious effect on a small but significant percentage of drivers, for a percentage of the time. It is reasonable to assume that if we reversed the cause then the effect would also reverse in a similarly incremental fashion, so that it would gradually take effect over a period of time.

The other thing to bear in mind is that in the event of a policy change we wouldn't be expecting the Government to suddenly run a massive "Speed Doesn't Kill" campaign would we? What we'd hopefully expect is that the campaign messages would shift towards other more useful safety messages, which we could reasonably expect to have a more positive effect on safety.

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

You may be right, but then again it may be you who is underestimating the lengths to which some folks will go to apportion blame for their loss (in this instance at the hands of a 'speeding' driver at a site where ther was formerly a speed camera) on an identifiable target (someone who campaigned vigorously for them to be removed). But, then again, we could debate it all day, nobody will know until the circumstances exist for it to be attempted, and as yet they don't.

I think that's the entire point: we should be coming up with ideas now rather than waiting for these incidents to occur.

_________________
If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

I agree we're behind where we should be on driver quality. I agree that new drivers over the last decade are getting less in the way of skills, experience and sound safety messages. But this road safety debt is ALREADY showing in the stats.

If we turn off all the cameras overnight we'll immediately start on the road to recovery. I'm 100% certain of it.

Your question really concerns the possibility of a "short term" positive crash blip as some drivers adapt to new conditions. I don't see any evidence that should a blip would take place. If we really had a generation of "camera dependent" drivers, then I think the evidence in the speed survey data would show them up. It doesn't. As JT wrote, if we have speed averse drivers then they won't suddenly stop being speed averse when the cameras are turned off.

The bottom line is that any driver who fails to set his speed to the conditions is a dangerous liability with or without cameras. Cameras DO NOT cause drivers to set their speed to the conditions. See this page:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/why.html

Turning off the cameras won't cause a significant rise in crashes.

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

Thanks Paul. That's basically all I was asking. I just had a concern on how the message would be put across and a perceived (on my part) disparity between the knowledge of a newly qualified (last five years) driver and an experienced driver.

One thing that has come out of this thread (in my opinion anyway) is that a lot of the regular contributors to this forum appear to be on full scale troll alert. Despite the fact that I clearly stated that I agree with the entire SafeSpeed message, I was still accused of opposing the removal of speed cameras. Can I suggest that people thoroughly read posts before replying. Exactly the same thing happened with Eurostar recently and I don't think it helps the debate in the slightest (we don't want to end up like Cycling Plus!).

_________________
If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

There is a big difference here between what I (or Paul, or whoever) would do if put in charge of road safety in the UK, and what is actually likely to happen. In reality, as I said, it would be a low-profile backtrack covered by a lot of smoke and mirrors - the cameras wouldn't all be turned off in a grand ceremony. It's also unlikely for presentational reasons that all cameras would be removed, they would simply be reduced in numbers. Changes in emphasis don't happen overnight, they are slow evolutions. Maybe once it became clear that the removal of some cameras wasn't leading to carnage on the roads, more would be removed.

We also need to bear in mind that some police force areas have few or no cameras, and in most others some roads have lots of cameras, and other similar roads have none. There isn't an obviously greater amount of irresponsible driving where there are no cameras.

A few people would let rip, but properly targeted traffic policing would deal with that. After all, if you want to drive like a knob, there are plenty of places you can do it today with very little prospect of being caught.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Yes, maybe some people have been too eager to jump to conclusions.

But there has been a surge of trolling recently, and also quite a few trolls (also the occasional e-mail sent to me in connection with my website) tend to start off with a statement that they have read your website and been very impressed with the arguments, but... - and then head off in the opposite direction on a long rant. Possibly your genuine inquiry (which is a very valid point) was misinterpreted as one of those.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed