Speed Camera Loophole Exposed
Discussion
turbobloke said:
Now that the speed mania era is passing albeit too slowly we can only hope for better leadership at all levels so that scarce resources are better directed.
What do you think are the main causes of the reduction in fatalities over the years? Especially the larger drop over '05 to '10. I'm happy to accept it's not cameras. 
Based on this graph, I don't think you can determine anything in particular as the source of KSI stat reductions. If you look at the line of best fit before and after speed cameras, the gradient is the same. Surely if anything, you can say speed cameras have made no difference.
The point about the reduction from 2005 on is irrelevant. What about the reduction from 1972-1975?
La Liga said:
turbobloke said:
Now that the speed mania era is passing albeit too slowly we can only hope for better leadership at all levels so that scarce resources are better directed.
What do you think are the main causes of the reduction in fatalities over the years? Especially the larger drop over '05 to '10. I'm happy to accept it's not cameras. witko999 said:
Based on this graph, I don't think you can determine anything in particular as the source of KSI stat reductions. If you look at the line of best fit before and after speed cameras, the gradient is the same. Surely if anything, you can say speed cameras have made no difference.
The point about the reduction from 2005 on is irrelevant. What about the reduction from 1972-1975?
I presented it to show the overall road safety strategy appears to be working and it wouldn't flag up as a major risk issue for the police to justify allocating further resources (at the expense of area of risk) to enforcement activity.
turbobloke said:
With respect, that was largely covered in a previous post in terms of continuous improvements in vehicle safety regarding both occupants and pedestrian impacts, better medevac options (helimed), improved trauma care in the golden hour, and the crunch-recession taking vehicles off the road from 2007 on. I would expect the increasing pressure not to drink and drive has contributed to the improvements, iirc the North report claimed a reduction in deaths and serious injuries associated with drink-driving.
So pretty much non-enforcement things. That's what I'd have thought, and it even less justified to have limited resources focus upon activity which is more likely to have a small impact. The focus should be continued development of the main areas which lead to death-reduction. turbobloke said:
Then again there's scope for more on that front and drug-driving data remains weak at the moment.
The tests are quite weak and very time-consuming. We need a state-approved roadside machine to really move this area forward. La Liga said:
So pretty much non-enforcement things.
The position in the recent past and present won't show improvements due to a nationwide crackdown on dangerous driving - without the need for transferring officers as indicated previously - if there hasn't been one involving those currrently policing the roads. We've had nothing close to the misplaced mania on speed. As a result there's no basis for dismissing enforcement even partially, as per the North report and drink driving, the key thing is to target enforcement on safety-related behaviour, which isn't happening with a focus on speed. The term dangerous driving offers a clue and I return to the wise words of Sir John Stevens as Metropolitan Police Commissioner: "I want my traffic policing to target the dangerous drivers, the road hogs, and the menaces who are driving unlicensed and uninsured.” Impaired drivers too. If only there were more like him.Targeted and intelligence-led policing works i.e. X is a regular drink driver and drives home from the pub every Friday at whatever time. Y is a disqualified driver who drives every day at whatever time. Driving around hoping to see dangerous driving is wasteful.
turbobloke said:
"I want my traffic policing to target the dangerous drivers, the road hogs, and the menaces who are driving unlicensed and uninsured.” Impaired drivers too. If only there were more like him.
What makes you think they aren't doing that already? What do you think they are doing? La Liga said:
Targeted and intelligence-led policing works i.e. X is a regular drink driver and drives home from the pub every Friday at whatever time. Y is a disqualified driver who drives every day at whatever time. Driving around hoping to see dangerous driving is wasteful.
It's not a case of driving around hoping to see anything, surely hoping not to see bad driving in any category is better. It's a case of policing the roads. La Liga said:
turbobloke said:
"I want my traffic policing to target the dangerous drivers, the road hogs, and the menaces who are driving unlicensed and uninsured.” Impaired drivers too. If only there were more like him.
What makes you think they aren't doing that already? What do you think they are doing? La Liga said:
turbobloke said:
there's still too much wasted effort on vehicle speed in relation to speed limits, which is unproductive except for the fines and course fees.
Not by traffic officers. They rarely do excess speed enforcement. vonhosen said:
La Liga said:
turbobloke said:
there's still too much wasted effort on vehicle speed in relation to speed limits, which is unproductive except for the fines and course fees.
Not by traffic officers. They rarely do excess speed enforcement. 
rs1952 said:
vonhosen said:
La Liga said:
turbobloke said:
there's still too much wasted effort on vehicle speed in relation to speed limits, which is unproductive except for the fines and course fees.
Not by traffic officers. They rarely do excess speed enforcement. vonhosen said:
A perfectly natural consequence of speed limits is enforcement of the same for no other reason than to encourage compliance.
Why do we need such strict compliance? Going by the graph posted earlier, the number of deaths has been steadily reducing at the same rate before speed cameras were introduced, and continues at that same rate after their introduction. So why suddenly do a relatively large number of the driving population have to be fined for minor (consequence-less) infringements, when they weren't before? I'm certain that it's only about the huge revenue raised. And why are speed limits being widely cut?I'd be interested to know what percentage of the driving population have been fined for speeding in the last 5/10 years. I would hazard a guess that it's the highest number ever recorded, and yet that graph gradient remains exactly the same.
witko999 said:
I'm certain that it's only about the huge revenue raised.
There is no huge revenue raised. Total revenue to the treasury for 2011 / 2012 was £589,000,000,000 (£589 billion).
During 2006/2007, the gross revenue for speeding FPNs was £114,000,000 (£114 million). Change this figure if you know any other data.
That's 0.019% - that's irrelevant, statistical noise.
Tell me, if you made £30,000 per year, would you consider £5.70 of that to be "huge revenue"? How much effort would you put into raising that relative amount?
You then have to remove costs. Figures I've seen (based on the old FPN of £60) was that net income to the treasury was £4-6.
The there's the changes in the road safety grants in 2007 and 2010, which mean the treasury receive even less (IIRC) due to speed awareness courses being increased.
It doesn't add up to me.
witko999 said:
I'd be interested to know what percentage of the driving population have been fined for speeding in the last 5/10 years. I would hazard a guess that it's the highest number ever recorded, and yet that graph gradient remains exactly the same.
You're looking at the rate of reduction in a one dimensional way. There could be, and is likely to be, more 'pressure' to result in diminishing reductions. Imagine a spring, the more you press it down the more effort it takes to obtain the same distance already travelled when it was pressed down less. The more you reduce road deaths, the more effort it takes to continue to achieve the same reductions. A saturation point / equilibrium will eventually occur, you'll then be able to watch the opportunists assign their own cause to the effect without evidence.
I'm not attributing that to speed cameras (but for simplicity of demonstrating the point), without them the rate of change could have decreased (diminishing reductions).
La Liga said:
witko999 said:
I'm certain that it's only about the huge revenue raised.
There is no huge revenue raised. Total revenue to the treasury for 2011 / 2012 was £589,000,000,000 (£589 billion).
La Liga said:
During 2006/2007, the gross revenue for speeding FPNs was £114,000,000 (£114 million). Change this figure if you know any other data.
That's 0.019% - that's irrelevant, statistical noise.
Your GCSE in statistics is showing again That's 0.019% - that's irrelevant, statistical noise.
The sum in question is £114m which is a large amount of money.
Conversion to a percentage of a large number - irrelevant or not - is a means of making a large sum look smaller along essentially propagandist lines. That's not a personal accusation, it's a description of the effect. A noddy tutorial on the psychology involved is here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20130828112...
The point about oosts is worth making but the sum of £114 looks to me like it's from speed cameras alone, as opposed to all income from speeding. DfT data back in 2007 showed speed camera income as £115m.
La Liga said:
The there's the changes in the road safety grants in 2007 and 2010, which mean the Treasury receives even less (IIRC) due to speed awareness courses being increased.
Does that mean that the police get the money for speed course fees while also keeping any serving officers off the streets to conduct the courses? There's a vested interest issue there either way.
La Liga said:
...'ll then be able to watch the opportunists assign their own cause to the effect without evidence...
We've seen that phenomenon already, with the speed obsession and speed cameras.La Liga said:
speed cameras ...without them the rate of change could have decreased (diminishing reductions)
The scale used to represent data on a chart can be chosen wittingly or unwittingly to give varying impressions, revealing or obscuring attributes. This version was at transport-watch.co.uk but the link has moved so all I have is the copy I took some time ago. With apologies for that, this rendition shows that there has been a diminshing reduction and it happens to be a step change (rather than a continuous gradual slowdown) coinciding curiously with the speedcam era.
La Liga said:
ou're looking at the rate of reduction in a one dimensional way.
There could be, and is likely to be, more 'pressure' to result in diminishing reductions. Imagine a spring, the more you press it down the more effort it takes to obtain the same distance already travelled when it was pressed down less. The more you reduce road deaths, the more effort it takes to continue to achieve the same reductions. A saturation point / equilibrium will eventually occur, you'll then be able to watch the opportunists assign their own cause to the effect without evidence.
I'm not attributing that to speed cameras (but for simplicity of demonstrating the point), without them the rate of change could have decreased (diminishing reductions).
I totally agree with this (except the bit about speed cameras, obviously There could be, and is likely to be, more 'pressure' to result in diminishing reductions. Imagine a spring, the more you press it down the more effort it takes to obtain the same distance already travelled when it was pressed down less. The more you reduce road deaths, the more effort it takes to continue to achieve the same reductions. A saturation point / equilibrium will eventually occur, you'll then be able to watch the opportunists assign their own cause to the effect without evidence.
I'm not attributing that to speed cameras (but for simplicity of demonstrating the point), without them the rate of change could have decreased (diminishing reductions).
) . It is diminishing returns. But what level of deaths are acceptable? In my opinion, the level of acceptable KSI's should have already been reached, and now everybody suffers at the attempts to reduce them further. It is ridiculous to strive for zero deaths because to do so would decrease the value of the road network. We could make zero deaths by making ridiculously low speed limits, but obviously there is a knock on effect in doing so.turbobloke said:
The sum in question is £114m which is a large amount of money.
The accusation is one of huge revenue, not what one considers a "large amount of money". You've substituted the question for one you find easier to answer. Who says it's a "large sum"? If you go through psychological 'intensity matching' and 'substitution', then we can easily reach that conclusion. Yes, it's a lot of money to an individual and we will feel it's a lot of money. But we're not talking about an individual, we're talking about the state's revenue. An emotive, intuitive response to the plus-hundred million figure is what creates the irrationally and momentum around the accusation. The media plays people like a fiddle with this repetitive story. Ask people how much effort they'd put into raising 0.019% of their income and you're more likely to align to collective human thinking and behaviour since you're getting a truer response. Ask them how much effort they'd put into raising over £100 million and you'll trigger off bias and deviate from normal decision making as they'll most like answer "what would 100 million mean to me?". Behavioural economics is really interesting stuff.
turbobloke said:
Conversion to a percentage of a large number - irrelevant or not - is a means of making a large sum look smaller
And a "large sum" without context can mislead into thinking it's much more relevant and important to the annual revenue than it is as above. It works both ways and that's why all the "it's for revenue" people only present the hundred-million figure without the correct context or a full data set as it wouldn't afford them as a great an opportunity to trigger an emotive, knee-jerk response. I presented both figures.
The percentage is fundamental and essential to the context, which was that speeding generates "huge revenue".
Revenue said:
The income of a government from taxation, excise duties, customs, or other sources, appropriated to the payment of the public expenses.
So in order to judge whether or not it's "huge", one needs the total income figure to provide the anchor and appropriate context. A whole conspiracy, agenda and grief created to raise 0.019% (and with minus costs this figure will reduce potentially a lot further). It doesn't add up. It's a meaningless sum of money, regardless of whether or not you consider it to be "large".
turbobloke said:
The point about costs is worth making but the sum of £114 looks to me like it's from speed cameras alone, as opposed to all income from speeding. DfT data back in 2007 showed speed camera income as £115m.
The costs reduce the figure more than non-automated enforcement figure add to it, I'd imagine. turbobloke said:
Does that mean that the police get the money for speed course fees while also keeping any serving officers off the streets to conduct the courses? There's a vested interest issue there either way.
Aren't the courses externally tendered with external staff? witko999 said:
I totally agree with this (except the bit about speed cameras, obviously ) . It is diminishing returns. But what level of deaths are acceptable? In my opinion, the level of acceptable KSI's should have already been reached, and now everybody suffers at the attempts to reduce them further. It is ridiculous to strive for zero deaths because to do so would decrease the value of the road network. We could make zero deaths by making ridiculously low speed limits, but obviously there is a knock on effect in doing so.
Quite possibly. But if true, since we're agreed on here the main reductions in deaths on the road are safer roads and vehicles, that would make it even more irrational to put more police time into something they're going to have absolute minimal impact upon. ) . It is diminishing returns. But what level of deaths are acceptable? In my opinion, the level of acceptable KSI's should have already been reached, and now everybody suffers at the attempts to reduce them further. It is ridiculous to strive for zero deaths because to do so would decrease the value of the road network. We could make zero deaths by making ridiculously low speed limits, but obviously there is a knock on effect in doing so.Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff