RE: Cameras cut death in Scotland, continue in England
Discussion
robinessex said:
I 'qualify' the ability of speed cameras to reduce accidents by asking if anyone thinks they could halt a locust swarm with a few hundred people armed with fly swats. We all know the answer to that, don't we?
Locusts don't worry if there might be a flyswatter in the hand of the human they're about to fly past, or one in the unmarked police locust behind them.iwantagta said:
Durbster you are an idiot. This is NOTHING to do with your age its totally unrealted.
This is all about people rushing home to watch Big Brother.
The below graph shows a positive correlation between the two which is undeniable, Our best bet as a nation to reduce road deaths is to ban big brother with immediate affect. Figures taken from Wikipedia so may need double checking.
This is all about people rushing home to watch Big Brother.
The below graph shows a positive correlation between the two which is undeniable, Our best bet as a nation to reduce road deaths is to ban big brother with immediate affect. Figures taken from Wikipedia so may need double checking.
Prof Prolapse said:
AER said:
GTiFrank said:
Prof Prolapse said:
Epic science fail, causality does not equal causation.
ThisYou mean correlation does not equal causation...?
Terrifyingly I'm a scientist as well... And after mocking the government for a science failure... I'll get my coat.
IIRC there was once upon a time an article in the Association of British Drivers mag that showed that whenever the gimps want to show that cameras work, they use as baseline data a period from the late 80s / early 90s when there was a random spike in the casualty numbers. They then claim credit for the inevitable regression to the mean that occurred during the following years.
I only try to comment on things I know to be true after witnessing them with my own eyes (ok that's not at all true but my point here is 100% justified).
A road I regularly walk along on the way to my gym (and have done for 3 years) had in the last 6 months, speed cameras placed on it which also act as traffic light cameras too. The area of road where these are in operation has caused a very noticeable slow down in traffic. Traffic on that stretch has been forced to travel within the legal limit of 30mph which then goes onto a 40mph stretch which merges into a 60mph road.
The stretch of road where there are no cameras whatsoever can be described as dangerous, in that the danger presented to pedestrians and other road users are vehicles traveling above the speed limit along that part of road. Not all vehicles of course, just enough to warrant mentioning here and my heightened attention while walking along the pavement. To a pedestrian, it is very noticeable.
This was highlighted to me just the other week where a police accident sign was placed near a set of traffic lights asking for witnesses to a road accident involving a pedestrian. No speed cameras were in use in this section of road.
So, for me it really is as simple as that. Take one stretch of road, split it into two and place speed cameras on one half while leaving the other half alone. The result is undeniable. Traffic travels within the legal limit in the half with cameras. Whereas the half without cameras means you get a lot of tw@ts in a range of vehicles bombing up and down at twice the legal limit.
I write this because the difference is like night and day, it's almost comical.
I really hope the council wakes up and puts more cameras on this bit of road. I'm not an advocate of cameras, but on this piece of road I've seen quite a few near misses with pedestrians and between cars. On a lot of roads like this, there's no denying it's a common sense measure.
A road I regularly walk along on the way to my gym (and have done for 3 years) had in the last 6 months, speed cameras placed on it which also act as traffic light cameras too. The area of road where these are in operation has caused a very noticeable slow down in traffic. Traffic on that stretch has been forced to travel within the legal limit of 30mph which then goes onto a 40mph stretch which merges into a 60mph road.
The stretch of road where there are no cameras whatsoever can be described as dangerous, in that the danger presented to pedestrians and other road users are vehicles traveling above the speed limit along that part of road. Not all vehicles of course, just enough to warrant mentioning here and my heightened attention while walking along the pavement. To a pedestrian, it is very noticeable.
This was highlighted to me just the other week where a police accident sign was placed near a set of traffic lights asking for witnesses to a road accident involving a pedestrian. No speed cameras were in use in this section of road.
So, for me it really is as simple as that. Take one stretch of road, split it into two and place speed cameras on one half while leaving the other half alone. The result is undeniable. Traffic travels within the legal limit in the half with cameras. Whereas the half without cameras means you get a lot of tw@ts in a range of vehicles bombing up and down at twice the legal limit.
I write this because the difference is like night and day, it's almost comical.
I really hope the council wakes up and puts more cameras on this bit of road. I'm not an advocate of cameras, but on this piece of road I've seen quite a few near misses with pedestrians and between cars. On a lot of roads like this, there's no denying it's a common sense measure.
Edited by Hellbound on Friday 3rd August 19:45
Ican said:
I predict next year when road deaths jump back up to the norm they will all come out saying we need more speed cameras to stop the unprecedented rise in road deaths!! 
I think we should agree here that as a term and as a means of measurement, 'road deaths' is just not specific enough. Certainly not something we could have a meaningful debate over. That's sort of why I think pieces like this on PH will only ever go one way in the comments section.I think that cars are safer for occupants and pedestrians, fuel price makes a lot of drivers ease off the gas, attitudes to speeding have hardened in a similar way to drink driving, and young drivers, who are statistically by far the most likely to kill themselves and others, are struggling to afford running their own motors at 17-20 years of age.
I wouldn't mind cameras so much if people didn't brake to 10mph below the damned limit as soon as they see them.
I wouldn't mind cameras so much if people didn't brake to 10mph below the damned limit as soon as they see them.
Not clear why this article is so uncritical of what are plainly nonsensical claims based on imprecise figures. It reads like a re-hash of the press release. We all know that the claimed link between scameras and falling road casualties is spurious so why treat us to an uncritical repeat of this nonsense? Sorry Riggers but I know you can do better.
Debaser said:
Seems a lot of effort to save so few lives.
Care to assign a value to a life? How much should we aim to be spending per life saved? You probably think I'm being emotive here. Irrespective of this article, we can't live in a society where we assign monetary values to real lives. I know there's a real argument that this is already happening in the NHS though.It's never really an honest and frank discussion unless you've lost someone or been directly affected by speeding. The same with police brutality, people dismiss it as par for the course until they've been on the thick end of a few kicks and punches from plod.
If there was better detail breakdown of the statistics I would agree with the article.
For all the nay sayers this sort of article appears regularly in Australia and the reality is quite differerent.
Used for increasing the number of cameras in Australia, " Speeding is difined as any vechicle involved in an incident and there is the slightest loss of controll no matter how slow the person was speeding."
I would not be surprised if the quoted info includes padestrian accidents removed from the data.
For all the nay sayers this sort of article appears regularly in Australia and the reality is quite differerent.
Used for increasing the number of cameras in Australia, " Speeding is difined as any vechicle involved in an incident and there is the slightest loss of controll no matter how slow the person was speeding."
I would not be surprised if the quoted info includes padestrian accidents removed from the data.
Hellbound said:
Debaser said:
Seems a lot of effort to save so few lives.
Care to assign a value to a life? How much should we aim to be spending per life saved? You probably think I'm being emotive here. Irrespective of this article, we can't live in a society where we assign monetary values to real lives. I know there's a real argument that this is already happening in the NHS though.It's never really an honest and frank discussion unless you've lost someone or been directly affected by speeding. The same with police brutality, people dismiss it as par for the course until they've been on the thick end of a few kicks and punches from plod.
If we're going to try and save all 60 we might as well ban ladders (53 deaths in 2010) and baths (29 deaths in 2010).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/oct/2...
Ten times more people are killed falling down stairs than are killed by speeding. Maybe once we've cured cancer we can spend a bit more effort on all these minor causes of death.
It's unreasonable to expect nobody will die on our roads - the rail network doesn't target zero deaths because they accept it's unrealistic.
We already assign a monetary value to real lives. Manufacturers could develop cars that are ten times safer than they are now, but nobody would pay for them because the extra lives saved isn't worth the £££.
The 'if it saves just one life it's worth it' attitude is complete b
ks. Our roads are already safe enough.Gassing Station | Motoring News | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff