The fast and the furious

[nonegreen]

Paul Kelso writes in the Guardian today questioning all the fuss made about speed cameras.Focussing on the anti speed camera lobby. Apparently we are a significant minority of Middle Britain, the soft right. We are given credit for making the media dance to our tune. According to Mary Williams of Brake the press are pliant and the government are too timid to resist the undue influence exerted by the anti camera lobby. We are accused again, by Williams of misusing accident statistics and making great causal leaps that the figures do not back up.

Three such examples of the media acting favourably to the anti camera lobby are The Times, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. All of whom led with the story of the £5 levvy on Monday.

Quote Kelso Guardian G2 Wednesday "The Mail called the proposed levvy an outrage, and described speeding on British roads, which causes an average of 10 fatalaties a day, as a victimless crime."


Now I know journalists have to be highly literate individuals but I never knew innumeracy was also a requirement. According to my arithmetic 10 deaths per day would be 3650 deaths per year. Which is in fact more deaths than actually occur on the roads. Or has he found some evidence that people are dying of fright just thinking about speeding cars.

I must be wrong this is obviously an example of misusing statistics and making great causal leaps which the figures cannot support. Hush my mouth....

[dazren]

Must mean all the deaths on the roads are caused by speeding and a few other non-deaths for good measure.

DAZ

[PetrolTed]

I thought the death rate was about 3000+ a year?

[pies]

PetrolTed said:

I thought the death rate was about 3000+ a year?

but they arn't ALL caused by speeding

[apache]

Depends how you work the stats, if you add the figures from the Kegworth crash which killed 47 people in 1989. that'd bump em up a little, they were all speeding too

[gaston]

About 3,000 were killed in the World Trade Centre on 9/11. This led to war in Afganistan and, indirectly, Iraq.

Americans murder 25,000 of each other every year. George W doesn't seem too worried about that in the land of the free (and the home of the brave!?!?)

[hornet]

Is it me, or are these people starting to get backed into a corner? How would Mary Williams know about misjudged statistics if she's not prepared to even look at any analysis that opposes her own opinion?

The more this woman spouts, the more detached from reality she appears.

[_Al_]

the article said:

The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail all led with the story, ignoring the benefits to victims (a group all three publications regularly champion) and focusing instead on what they characterised as another example of stealthy taxation. The Mail called the proposed levy an outrage, and described speeding on British roads, which causes an average of 10 fatalities a day, as a "victimless crime".

It was a long article, and full off bull. I was going to take it apart bit by bit, but I can't be bothered as its 1:30am. Instead I'm just going to fire off an email of disgust and go to bed.