Discussion
All depends on how you define "problem area" doesn't it. VH is obviously defining "problem" as "speeding problem", whereas I'd have thought going by actual hard accident data would be a much better basis for a SAFETY camera deployment. If the road doesn't have an accident rate above what's expected given the traffic volume, frankly it doesn't matter how many people are above the limit or by how much, as their behaviour isn't contributing to the accident rate. Putting in a camera that alters their otherwise safe (ie no relation to accidents) behavior and induces unsafe behavior (panic braking) all in the name of safety is madness. It's got to the stage now whereby ANY van parked on a bridge is triggering waves of panic breaking, regardless of the general traffic speed +/- the limit. How can that possibly be beneficial to safety?
I wish the camera people and everyone associated with them would just drop the spin, manipulation and downright lies and just 'fess up to being about enforcement and nothing else. Drop all the fiddled statistics and "casualty reduction" PR horseshit and just be honest for a change will you? I have marginally more respect for you all that way.
I wish the camera people and everyone associated with them would just drop the spin, manipulation and downright lies and just 'fess up to being about enforcement and nothing else. Drop all the fiddled statistics and "casualty reduction" PR horseshit and just be honest for a change will you? I have marginally more respect for you all that way.
countryboy said:
Vonhosen, the simple problem is this.
Speed is simply not the issue. Why are you making it out to be so? I'm not saying that flooring it along at 130 is safe, but you simply cannot say that just because someone is doing 79 they are automatically in the wrong (or going too fast).
The whole point with speed is selecting a speed which you are comfortable with and can stop within a safe distance, as well as taking into account other factors (such as weather (etc.), so that in itself removes the "increase in speed increases severity of accidents" argument. Do you honestly think that suddenly forcing people to check that their neeedles isn't pointing above 70 is going to make a difference to safety?
I can, with a fair amount of confidence say, it won't.
If people are forced to travel slower than they can safely be 'comfortable' with, then other issues come in, such as lack of concetration, distraction etc, which dosen't help with safety.
I'm pretty sure you've come across a speed limit which you think, "for god's sake why?" or something like that. How do you feel, or drive when you come across these sort of limits?
I'm not saying that 79 has to be dangerous, but there is even risk with driving at 69mph & like you said you don't advocate barreling along at 130 & why ? Because it just increases the risk on that same road. That doesn't mean that 130 will be dangerous either if managed right, but there is still a greater inherent risk & it will have greater potential consequences where it isn't managed right. People do not receive training & testing here on managing that kind of speed safely & I believe that is necessary if we are going to have it.
Society only let's us choose the speed we think we can comfortably deal with up to the limit. That is the cut off line defined for everyone. That isn't in the main rigidly enforced, but where you go far beyond it, how is society to impose it's will that you don't go ahead and present the extra risk that you obviously think 130 might represent, if it's not through enforcement ? Society deems it not right for everyone to choose their own personal limits for every given situation, because we all have to interact with one another & when the differentials in our speeds get much greater so do the risks. Risks society is not willing to accept.
To that end there has to be a cut off point & that will be an arbitrary limit, we have one standard that society imposes on us all. We are not entrusted to make judgements on safe speed beyond the limits.
If I see a limit, I take the line that I am being given information about what is considered the safe maximum speed for this road & I try to keep within it. Where I consider it safe to that will be towards the upper end of that limit, where I don't consider it safe I'll be further away from the limit. The limit after all doesn't mean it's safe to do that speed, only that I shouldn't go above it.
>> Edited by vonhosen on Wednesday 26th April 07:01
turbobloke said:
Much better to focus on the remaining 96% which has a significantly higher set of figures relating for example to inattention (surprise surprise), following too close, limited observation and inadequate use of mirrors / shoulder checks, poor hazard recognition and anticipation, driving while tired or under the influence, not leaving a suitable distance to the vehicle ahead.
Higher speed exaggerates those problems, it deosn't help them.
Your point only has any basis or real world relevance under the presupposition that speed is a major factor in crashes. The presupposition isn't valid so your point crashes.
And excessive speed as a contributory factor in fatality collisions ?
turbobloke said:
Then prevent the crashes and you won't need to concern anyone with the irrelevance that is speed. As only 3% of crashes have causes related to speed it represents atrocious prioritising in safety terms to focus on it. Easy to measure but not important in the key issue of prevention. Better and safer not to have crashes than to think you're doing something useful by trying to engineer them at slower speeds, fatal mistake (pun intended). So road safety would be better managed with a focus away from speed and onto the main causes of crashes which don't include speeding. See Durham vs everywhere else as posted previously.
Again speed is not dealt with in isolation though, other areas are addressed as well.
You'll have no argument from me if you want better training & higher standards on the roads.
vonhosen said:
Again speed is not dealt with in isolation though, other areas are addressed as well.
You continually state this, and yet it appears to run contrary to the experience of virtually every other poster. Figures from the likes of Cheshire would also seem to suggest that the rise in automated speed enforcement has seen a drastic reduction in the levels of roads policing by actual human beings, leading me to suspect that your statement, no matter how honestly felt, is a load of foetid dingoes kidneys.
vonhosen said:
And excessive speed as a contributory factor in fatality collisions ?
If you are hinting that high speed and fatalities go together this is far too simplistic. Low speed collisions can easily be fatal, it's pure chance how impacts between cars and cars & cars and people take place.
If you are hinting that high speed roads are dangerous, not so they are our safest roads. Speed is a red herring as a road safety prioity because only 3% of crashes have a speed related cause.
Also if you are hinting that fatal crashes have a higher percentage of speed-related causes than all accidents together, then yes BUT fatal crashes are so rare that we now have a slightly bigger percentage but of a very very small number and this is also minuscule.
It is errant nonsense to prioritise speed issues in road safety terms.
turbobloke said:
If you are hinting that high speed and fatalities go together this is far too simplistic. Low speed collisions can easily be fatal, it's pure chance how impacts between cars and cars & cars and people take place.
There was some research that bubbled up in a previous thread showing the experimental relationship between speed prior to accident and incidence of fatality. There is a strong corelation - and whilst slow accidents can be fatal, and people can survive high speed accidents, the corelation still exists.
vonhosen said:
Society only let's us choose the speed we think we can comfortably deal with up to the limit.
Society deems it not right for everyone to choose their own personal limits for every given situation,
we have one standard that society imposes on us all. We are not entrusted to make judgements on safe speed beyond the limits.
And just who is this 'society'? as I recall the speed limits were set without any expert advice and set in place in an era when roads and vehicles were vastly different to todays.
Limits are set under recommendation and pressure from people like Prof D Begg and Mary Williams, definitely not experts!
I can assure you, they do not speak for me
7db said:
There was some research that bubbled up in a previous thread showing the experimental relationship between speed prior to accident and incidence of fatality. There is a strong corelation - and whilst slow accidents can be fatal, and people can survive high speed accidents, the corelation still exists.
It is obvious that fatal crashes will tend to have a higher speed rather than lower speed component. And, as the impact speed cannot be higher than the pre-impact free travelling speed, the pre-impact free travelling speed will tend to be higher in fatal crashes than in non-fatal crashes. Lower speed crashes are less likely to be serious or fatal because of the physics. What else would you expect? However, it is nonsense to use the existence of that correlation to support strict enforcement of speed limits.
It has been estimated (by police sources) that ~10 million speeding events occur every day (actually a very conservative estimate, imo) - that's ~3.5 billion per annum. Common sense and observation of real world driving behaviour tells us that a large proportion of these (let's guess and say 60% = 2.1 billion) will be below the usual enforcement threshold, a smaller proportion (let's say 35% = 1.2 billion) will be above the enforcement threshold but not excessive or inappropriate for the conditions and the remainder (5% or 175 million) will be "serious" speeding which represents a real threat to other road users. These are all guesses but give some idea of the likely scale of the numbers involved. So, ignoring the "trivial" speeding events, we have a population of ~1.4 billion "treatable" speeding events that could be the target of speed enforcement. Let's do a reality check on that number. There are ~32 million licensed vehicles in the UK. Let's assume that on average 25% are used on any day; that means that the number of "vehicle days" per annum is ~2.9 billion so, on average, each vehicle in use is involved in a "treatable speeding event" once in every 2 days. This is educated guesswork but the estimated total number of "treatable speeding events" appears to err on the side of understatement.
At the same time, there are ~3,000 fatal crashes, ~30,000 KSI crashes and ~300,000 slight injury crashes (total ~333,000 fatal/injury crashes). General estimates are that the incidence of inappropriate or excess speed as a causation factor in all injury crashes is ~30%, including inappropriate or excess speed within the speed limit. Let's guess that 50% of the 30% (~50,000) include a "treatable speeding event". So the ratio of all treatable speeding events to fatal/injury crashes which include a treatable speeding event is 1.4 billion:50,000 or ~28,000:1. So it is obvious that the statistical link between any individual treatable speeding event and an fatal/injury crash is almost negligible.
Therefore, any intelligent analysis has to conclude that there is a component in the ~333,000 injury crashes that is something other than (or in addition to) the treatable speeding event behaviour that occurs at least 1.4 billion times each year. That 'something else' could be wildly excessive and inappropriate speed (the top 5% (175 million) of speeding events), behaviour that may be exhibited by boy racers, TWOCers, drugged/drunk drivers etc., but will also, in nearly all cases, include some other serious driving error (inattention or failure of observation will be the most common).
Having identified that there are (some) crash causation component(s), other than treatable speeding event behaviour, that (by themselves or in conjunction with speeding) are a reliable indicator of crash risk, should we seek to reduce injury crashes by treating (or seeking to treat) 1.4 billion speeding events or does it make more sense to identify and treat the other component(s)? In addition, we've already agreed (fair assumption) that 1.2 billion of the 1.4 billion treatable speeding events are not unsafe or inappropriate, so speed enfocement treatment will penalise safe and appropriate speeding behaviour at least seven times more frequently than unsafe behaviour. So, in addition to the futility of applying a treatment to a behaviour that in 99.99% of cases does not result in the harm we're seeking to alleviate, we add the probability that the same treatment, in ~90% of cases (probably more), will penalise behaviour that is actually both safe and appropriate.
That is the insanity of the establishment obessesion with speed enforcement. It's the wrong treatment applied largely to people who don't need it. In the meantime, the real common factors in accident causation (inattention, poor observation, aggressive driving etc) are (by comparison) ignored.
apache said:
Society only let's us choose the speed we think we can comfortably deal with up to the limit.
Society deems it not right for everyone to choose their own personal limits for every given situation,
we have one standard that society imposes on us all. We are not entrusted to make judgements on safe speed beyond the limits.
And just who is this 'society'? as I recall the speed limits were set without any expert advice and set in place in an era when roads and vehicles were vastly different to todays.
Limits are set under recommendation and pressure from people like Prof D Begg and Mary Williams, definitely not experts!
I can assure you, they do not speak for me
The elected representatives of the day set them & the elected representatives since/today have the power to change them. They are your representatives.
vonhosen said:
Society only let's us choose the speed we think we can comfortably deal with up to the limit.
Society deems it not right for everyone to choose their own personal limits for every given situation,
we have one standard that society imposes on us all. We are not entrusted to make judgements on safe speed beyond the limits.
And just who is this 'society'? as I recall the speed limits were set without any expert advice and set in place in an era when roads and vehicles were vastly different to todays.
Limits are set under recommendation and pressure from people like Prof D Begg and Mary Williams, definitely not experts!
I can assure you, they do not speak for me
The elected representatives of the day set them & the elected representatives since/today have the power to change them. They are your representatives.
oh right, I overlooked the fact that these civil servants work for me
Observer2 said:
However, it is nonsense to use the existence of that correlation to support strict enforcement of speed limits...
...So, ignoring the "trivial" speeding events, we have a population of ~1.4 billion "treatable" speeding events that could be the target of speed enforcement...
Is that strict enforcement getting most of those treatable events then, or is your view that the enforcement is actually quite lax?
Observer2 said:
It is obvious... What else would you expect?...It has been estimated...Common sense...let's guess...let's say...These are all guesses...Let's assume ...guesswork...
So it is obvious that the statistical link between any individual treatable speeding event and an fatal/injury crash is almost negligible.
Hmmmm. Seems like a lot of waffle to me that many here would be jumping up and down at if it were an SCP publishing it.
Observer2 said:
So the ratio of all treatable speeding events to fatal/injury crashes which include a treatable speeding event is 1.4 billion:50,000 or ~28,000:1. So it is obvious that the statistical link between any individual treatable speeding event and an fatal/injury crash is almost negligible.
And the logic which holds your assumptions together is flawed, too.
Suppose Malaria were to cause fatality in 1 in 1,000 cases of infestation, then would we similarly reason that it were not causal, and not worth eradicating?
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