Speed cameras: Are we interested in evidence?

[Cat]

Dave Finney said:

Hi Cat, long tome no see!
My mobile report was submitted, reviewed and accepted into the "Road Safety Knowledge Centre".
See link top left: https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/08_mobile_report/

My report "DOES REDUCING TRAFFIC SPEED USING SPEED CAMERAS REDUCE THE NUMBER OF COLLISIONS?";
was also submitted, reviewed and accepted into the "Road Safety Knowledge Centre".
See link top right: https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/07_5pc_per_1mph_re...

I'm not aware of other reports citing mine,
but I invented the term SSP (site selection period) and that is becoming standard now in other reports.
eg the RAC Foundation report into how to evaluate cameras, and also their report on average speed cameras.

The Road Safety Knowledge Centre is simply a repository of road safety information - it's not peer reviewed.

It is unusual that despite your reports apparently being "the most accurate ever produced", having "the highest quality evidence possible" and "my report presents the highest standard of evidence possible given the data available", they have not been subject to any peer review and the rest of the research in this area has not refered to them in over a decade since they were published.

Cat

[heebeegeetee]

Dave Finney said:

heebeegeetee said:

Re Dave's thread, I fully admit I genuinely did not know, nor could ever imagine, that people are crashing so badly that loss of life and/or life changing injury is involved, *simply because they've seen a speed camera.* And Dave's blaming the camera?! Again, I think the world is going nuts.

Yes, after 20 years of being told that speed cameras save lives,
discovering that that is completely false, is a difficult concept to take on board.

I didn't believe it at first.
I developed my FTP method back in 2008, and received the database in mid 2009.
I had the results by the end of 2009 but did not publish until over 2 years later.

It took a lot of work checking all the camera sites across the whole country where data was available,
and reading through all the reports showing why collisions occurred,
to finally understand that the results of my research were indeed correct.

So I do understand your struggle accepting the evidence.

Except I don't accept that it is completely false. Speed limits and enforcement is part of a large system, I don't expect lives to be saved only at locations of signage or enforcement.

It's been some time since I watched your film, remind me, overall is it the errant driver or those they drive into who are killed usually? I can't remember if this was covered.

[Dave Finney]

heebeegeetee said:

It really really does seem now that any journey of any length I do is either delayed for me, or I see long queues on other side of road following an incident there... people are crashing just far too much. The costs associated must be enormous - the cost to the nation, the cost to businesses, the cost to our insurance premiums, and so on. Collectively, those figures amount to £billions, every single year.

It has got to stop. (Or significantly reduce).

Yes, you may be right,
but the evidence suggests there are now more fatal and serious crashes as a result of speed cameras operating.
These are the very collisions that cause the roads to be closed,
contributing not only to the long delays,
but also the vast cost to us as tax payers that you mention.

How do you want road safety to be controlled?
Do you want officials to reject the best evidence and implement policies based on their opinions?
Well that's what you've got.
You can't then complain when the rejection of the best evidence leads to the very problems that you are so concerned about!

The ONLY way to be absolutely sure of the effects of ANY intervention,
speed cameras or anything else,
is to run scientific trials.

Officials have always refused to run scientific trials,
but that may be changing...
https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/scientific-trials/

[Greendubber]

Interesting, I've been to far too many fatal and serious RTCs over the years and none of them were caused by a speed camera. In fact I don't ever recall there being one present at any of them.

[heebeegeetee]

Dave Finney said:

Yes, you may be right,
but the evidence suggests there are now more fatal and serious crashes as a result of speed cameras operating.

On motorways and dual carriageways?

[Dave Finney]

Cat said:

The Road Safety Knowledge Centre is simply a repository of road safety information - it's not peer reviewed.

It is unusual that despite your reports apparently being "the most accurate ever produced", having "the highest quality evidence possible" and "my report presents the highest standard of evidence possible given the data available", they have not been subject to any peer review and the rest of the research in this area has not refered to them in over a decade since they were published.

Well, I don't know about other reports,
but my reports were very definitely reviewed by road safety experts
before being accepted into the Road Safety Knowledge Centre.

I know what the review of my 1st report said,
and I know who one of the expert reviewers was for my 2nd report.

Yes, but not that unusual considering the results are not politically acceptable.
Eg, one road safety researcher, having read my report with my new method for trend, and my new "FTP method",
then produced his own report using both of my 2 new methods,
but did not credit me for either of them.

My FTP method was also used in another report on average cameras,
but, again, I was not credited.

And there's another report that I can't find now,
but they used my FTP method, and credited the other researcher for it!

[Dave Finney]

heebeegeetee said:

Dave Finney said:

Yes, you may be right,
but the evidence suggests there are now more fatal and serious crashes as a result of speed cameras operating.

On motorways and dual carriageways?

Well, sometimes.
The very last example at the bottom. That was a dual carriageway, wasn't it?
https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/effects-of-speed-c...

[heebeegeetee]

Dave Finney said:

Well, sometimes.
The very last example at the bottom. That was a dual carriageway, wasn't it?
https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/effects-of-speed-c...

I am struggling Dave. I notice you don't date your reports. I notice that the report you're referring to '4YE' is now 20 years old, studying the years 1999-2004.
Isn't this all completely out of date?

Re the reports in the above link: they are local newspaper reports, surely the least accurate form of news reporting out there, worse possibly even than the likes of the Daily Express?
Quote: >>"A DRIVER may have been killed because he braked suddenly after spotting a speed camera."
"Witnesses said that, for no apparent reason, the victim's vehicle braked heavily, there was a lot of smoke and the car veered left and collided with the lamp-post."
"Fergus added: "There is no reason to believe Mr Davies was speeding."<<

So why did this driver brake so very hard if he wasn't even speeding? Did he not know anything about his speed or the speed limit, and instead died, and risked the lives of others, simply to avoid a fine and 3 points?

>>"He described how the camera was one factor which could have played a role in the death of retired school bursar..."<<

>>"Timothy Rowsell, of Burley, was travelling at a minimum of 78mph in the outside lane of the northbound A338 Bournemouth Spur Road when he crashed just after the Cooper Dean flyover. The speed limit there is 50mph." "Miss Beck said she saw smoke coming from the motorbike’s tyres". "Another car driver, Jacqueline Kennett, said Mr Rowsell had been riding sensibly when he passed her shortly before the accident" <<

The van wasn't even in operation, but just the sight of the van "almost certainly" caused the rider, who was travelling at over 50% above the speed limit (yet was described as riding sensibly) to brake so hard he lost control of his machine.

This is... nonsensical, I feel. This is all way out of date, local newspaper reports, full of 'mays' and 'could haves', describing the actions of some really bad drivers indeed. It's all as inaccurate and as unscientific as it gets.

I remain completely and totally unpersuaded. Flipping heck Dave, have you nothing better to do with your time?

Do you have one scientific report of one crash, where it the incident was properly looked at by crash investigators? (I mean, it's going to take more than one report to be meaningful, but is there even one?)

How many deaths of this nature per annum are we talking? Nowadays I mean, not back in 1999 or 2004?

[nute]

Dave Finney said:

I have provided the highest quality evidence possible, given the data available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GqOm-keyss

Thank you for that, very informative and I appreciate the time and effort which has gone into it.

[Dave Finney]

Greendubber said:

Interesting, I've been to far too many fatal and serious RTCs over the years and none of them were caused by a speed camera. In fact I don't ever recall there being one present at any of them.

Thanks for your hard work investigating RTCs.
It's one area where the Police provide a really good service,
and they are rarely credited for the quality of that difficult work.
Thank you.

All of the collisions in the graphs in my reports are those recorded by Police,
they were there at the scene, even if you weren't one of them.

But even those Police won't see the full picture created by the data that they collect.
You have to plot that data onto graphs,
and then look at when rates changed.

That's why we collect data in the first place,
to provide the evidence to prove what is having what effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GqOm-keyss

[nute]

heebeegeetee said:

Was is that graph supposed to be showing me... it appears to be dated 1990, and those figures for Spain don't look at all right to me...

In 1965 the cars were death traps relative to today and the all accident/casualty figures were higher, apart from numbers of vehicles and miles driven.

I don't think having a speed limit was a nonsense, we could argue til the cows come home whether the figure was right for 1965 but I don't think it would be far out... and it has no relevance to today.

As others are saying, the debate is no longer centred solely on safety, and those still banging on about safety are out of touch imo.

And on that note, yesterday, yet again, I have a journey delayed by a crash. I need to do an easy journey from nr Brum, on M6/A14 and a couple of junctions down M11. A14 is closed at J25 due to a crash https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/local-news/e...
so instead it's down M1 and hack across country. For the return journey Google Maps showed A14 was now viable, so we did it and passed the crash scene, the opposite carriageway is still being cleared up and being resurfaced some 11 hours after the crash, and we saw the huge queues still, on the other side, whereby all traffic inc big numbers of HGVs of course, were having to use that bit of road parallel to the A14 near Cambridge services. Misery for countless people and likewise for all those in the area. Luckily the kids are off school otherwise traffic would have been much heavier.

From that link above I see the A14 had been closed a few days before, in a crash just before evening rush hour involving seven injured, road closed for six hours, twenty firefighters involved... it's ridiculous. https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/local-news/s...

It really really does seem now that any journey of any length I do is either delayed for me, or I see long queues on other side of road following an incident there. Undoubtedly the safety built-in to cars nowadays means casualty figures are reduced, but that doesn't alter the fact that people are crashing just far too much. The costs associated must be enormous - the cost to the nation, the cost to businesses, the cost to our insurance premiums, and so on. Collectively, those figures amount to £billions, every single year.

I sometimes have to do a journey nipping round the M42 around Birmingham, the road is now near permanent 50mph limit due to never ending road works (and presumably HS2 works), the traffic is always very heavy, and it takes just one minor collision to bring it all to a halt, and in very short time queues for miles develop.

It has got to stop. (Or significantly reduce).

Further: I happened to take a glance at a car magazine in a store yesterday, they had an article about driver distraction due to the utterly st design of car controls nowadays. I couldn't believe my eyes and took a snapshot... Eyes Off The Road for 6.7 secs to change a radio station on one car, or 10.9 secs JUST TO CHANGE THE TEMPERATURE!! on another car, or hey, if you use voice control it's only 7.1 secs with eyes off the road.

I can do it by muscle memory on the old car sitting on my drive! WTF is the world coming too?

Re Dave's thread, I fully admit I genuinely did not know, nor could ever imagine, that people are crashing so badly that loss of life and/or life changing injury is involved, *simply because they've seen a speed camera.* And Dave's blaming the camera?! Again, I think the world is going nuts.

So, by all means post graphs from 1990 if you wish, but I'm saying the primary things affecting my motoring nowadays is not speed enforcement, not the policing of the roads which is way, way less than it used to be... (yes speed limits are too low for my liking but hey, people keep fecking crashing, and it's not just about safety, there is noise, air quality and there are others to consider too, such as residents and vulnerable road users), the no.1 thing involving my motoring nowadays is the sheer unreliability of journey times. (I'm still scarred by the journey I did from Dover to Sutton Coldfield a year or so ago that took 8 hours instead of the usual 4).

Edited by heebeegeetee on Wednesday 27th March 09:18

The delays and disruption is frequently from roadworks. Often there are a set of temp traffic lights causing traffic delays and when you go past them there is no reason for them to be there. Either the roadworks are finishes and it just takes time for the lights to be collected, the lights seem to be there so the contractor can park his van close to whatever he is doing on the verge or just nothing is happening to the road surface. My trip to my parents house, 1.5 hrs normally almost always has one or more sets of temp lights, the record was 7, of which in 3 cases something was actually happening.

The safety tail is wagging the dog in the UK.

We also have career roadworks on motorways and major roads where the works proceed at a pedestrian pace and end up taking years to complete. There seems to be no oversight on what is a reasonable period of time to get whatever the works are done.

I’ve just driven across France and most of Switzerland, 750 miles or so -
0 cones (except at the Swiss boarder where they were used to create a area for security inspections
0 roadworks
0 diversions
A handful of morons in the left lane, mostly with UK plates
A handful of potholes

The number of all of the above orders of magnitude higher in the uk just in the journey to get to the tunnel.

[Dave Finney]

heebeegeetee said:

Dave Finney said:

Well, sometimes.
The very last example at the bottom. That was a dual carriageway, wasn't it?
https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/effects-of-speed-c...

I am struggling Dave. I notice you don't date your reports. I notice that the report you're referring to '4YE' is now 20 years old, studying the years 1999-2004.
Isn't this all completely out of date?

My reports are dated. Each report has 3 pages:

Overview
Main report (date published at the top)
References

The 4YE is old, but it remains to this day the largest report on speed cameras in Britain.

The reason all these reports are old, is that they've stopped publishing the data.
Even the data they did publish, they've removed.
And they've NEVER run scientific trials,
nowhere in the world have they ever run scientific trials!

[heebeegeetee]

Dave Finney said:

My reports are dated. Each report has 3 pages:

Overview
Main report (date published at the top)
References

The 4YE is old, but it remains to this day the largest report on speed cameras in Britain.

The reason all these reports are old, is that they've stopped publishing the data.
Even the data they did publish, they've removed.
And they've NEVER run scientific trials,
nowhere in the world have they ever run scientific trials!

It's me then, I can't see the dates. https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/scientific-trials/

[Dave Finney]

heebeegeetee said:

Dave Finney said:

My reports are dated. Each report has 3 pages:

Overview
Main report (date published at the top)
References

The 4YE is old, but it remains to this day the largest report on speed cameras in Britain.

The reason all these reports are old, is that they've stopped publishing the data.
Even the data they did publish, they've removed.
And they've NEVER run scientific trials,
nowhere in the world have they ever run scientific trials!

It's me then, I can't see the dates. https://speedcamerareport.co.uk/scientific-trials/

Sorry,
Only my 3 reports using the data from the Thames Valley database are dated.

The other pages are just for information.
Eg the speeding page is data collected when I made the website.
I've edited the page every now and then, but not updated the data.

It's not my job you know.
I don't get paid for any of this.
I provide the evidence because I managed to do what all the experts were paid to do, tried to do, and failed.
And I felt it was my public duty to inform others so that lives could be saved.

[Cat]

Dave Finney said:

Yes, but not that unusual considering the results are not politically acceptable.

That's really weak reasoning for why the reports have not been cited by others. In the years since you produced the reports there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of studies by academics into speed cameras and their effects on collision rates and severities. To suggest that none have cited your reports, that are apparently "the most accurate ever produced", because the conclusions are not politically acceptable is not credible.

Cat

[Dave Finney]

Cat said:

That's really weak reasoning for why the reports have not been cited by others. In the years since you produced the reports there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of studies by academics into speed cameras and their effects on collision rates and severities. To suggest that none have cited your reports, that are apparently "the most accurate ever produced", because the conclusions are not politically acceptable is not credible.

Well some reports are using the methods that I developed, and not a single one has credited me.
They are also using some of the terms that I invented,
so I am making a difference, even if it's small and slowly.

Can you find a single one of your possibly hundreds of speed camera studies,
that has removed the effect of site selection?
(a clue: they call it “regression to the mean”, or RTM or RTTM).

[Cat]

Dave Finney said:

Can you find a single one of your possibly hundreds of speed camera studies,
that has removed the effect of site selection?
(a clue: they call it “regression to the mean”, or RTM or RTTM).

They are not my speed camera studies, but a quick Google brings up this as pretty much the 1st result which refers to 2 studies that address RTM...



Cat

[Dave Finney]

Cat said:

Dave Finney said:

Can you find a single one of your possibly hundreds of speed camera studies,
that has removed the effect of site selection?
(a clue: they call it “regression to the mean”, or RTM or RTTM).

They are not my speed camera studies, but a quick Google brings up this as pretty much the 1st result which refers to 2 studies that address RTM...

There are several reports that "address" RTM, but none of them "remove the effect of site selection (RTM)".

Your link is: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/eu-road...
BTW, the links for both of the reports are broken.

Neither of those reports removed the effect of site selection.
One of them "controlled" for RTM and the other "corrected" for RTM.
What that means is that they both estimated what effect RTM might have had and, from that, estimated what effect the cameras might have had.

My report does NOT use estimates of RTM,
it simply removes the effect of site selection (RTM) directly, without any estimates.
and finds the effect the cameras directly.
That's as accurate as you can get (without running scientific trials).

Furthermore, you can see it for yourself in the graphs, both in my reports and in my video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GqOm-keyss

Thank you for trying, want to have another go?
Can you find a single one of your possibly hundreds of speed camera studies,
that has removed the effect of site selection (IOW without making estimates)?

[Dave Finney]

nute said:

Dave Finney said:

I have provided the highest quality evidence possible, given the data available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GqOm-keyss

Thank you for that, very informative and I appreciate the time and effort which has gone into it.

Thanks nute,
I find the research relatively easy, but presenting the results is much more difficult.

It's nice to get confirmation that my video might explain the evidence in a way that most people can understand.
Thanks again.

[MKnight702]

Terminator X said:

60 road near me reduced to a 50 and now apparently it must be a 30. There was a consultation of course with all neg comments roundly ignored. Their reasoning was one fatal accident and a handful of serious accidents + speed kills as we all know.

TX.

Public consultation = We're telling you what we are going to do whether you agree or not.