Has the Gatso had its chips?
Road safety group Safe Speed has launched an early salvo in a row that looks likely to ignite when the Department for Transport (DfT) publishes the fourth annual report of the speed camera partnership scheme, probably later this week. It's the first of two documents that the DfT will publish on speed camera policy.
According to Safe Speed, last year's annual report was widely criticised for failing to account for 'regression to the mean effect' (RTTM) -- follow the first two links below for explanations. This year's report was expected in June, but has been greatly delayed. Safe Speed said it believed the delay resulted from attempts to account for RTTM effect -- and during the delay period, the DfT declared a moratorium on approving new speed camera sites.
Safe Speed said it "has no confidence that the new report will be accurate -- after all, look at the track record. Last year's report wildly exaggerated the benefits due to neglect of RTTM effect." According to the group, for the report to be meaningful and accurate, it must fully account for all the following effects and side effects:
- Regression to the mean effects at speed camera sites
- Reduction in traffic at speed camera sites
- Benefits of other engineering treatments at or near speed camera sites
- Correction for long term trends
- Confidence interval of results (are they 'statistically significant'?)
- Are site sizes realistic to isolate camera effects?
Side effects of speed cameras and speed camera policy including:
- driver attention diverted from road ahead towards speedo, speed limits and cameras.
- damage to the police / public relationship
- loss of confidence in official road safety messages
- reduced driver responsibility for speed choice
- more effective policies neglected or replaced
- the cash distorts local objectives
- traffic displaced to less safe routes as drivers seek to avoid cameras
- automated enforcement encourages some to operate outside the law (more improperly registered vehicles for example)
- drivers feel 'under pressure' and don't perform as safely
- heavy load on courts
- promotion of the illusion that driving within the speed limit will ensure safety (selected from a list of about 30 side effects)
Safe Speed said: "They will probably call the new report: 'independent' but it's far from independent because it will have been paid for by the DfT. Until the various side effects are fully accounted for, claims of benefits 'at speed camera sites' are worthless. For example we might apparently save 100 lives at camera sites but 'irritant' side effects may cost 1,000 lives elsewhere. Safe Speed believes that road deaths would have been reduced to about 2,000 per years by now if it wasn't for bad policy founded on speed cameras."
New scamera partnership handbook
The second document is the 2006/7 handbook for camera partnerships. Press reports suggest that there will be substantial changes in the way funds will be used, with the Sunday Times newspaper reporting that the cap on new camera sites will remain -- see related story link below. Reports also suggest that speed camera cash will be used for wider road safety purposes such as junction improvements.
Safe Speed said: "It is highly dangerous to tie necessary road safety improvements to speed camera cash. One item to watch out for is if the 'inverted' rule for speed camera placement remains. Up until now speed cameras have had to be placed where many vehicles are speeding. While this sounds superficially attractive, it has actually prevented speed cameras from being deployed in places where it is dangerous to exceed the speed limit (see link on rules below).
"No wonder we have all been complaining that speed cameras are in the wrong places. They are all in locations where it is normally 'safe to speed'."
Comment
What's clear is that the Government's moratorium on new cameras shows that it recognises the strength of the anti-camera campaigners -- and that it may even have got the whole policy wrong. But more importantly, it knows that it has lost the confidence of British motorists.
Last year's report claimed a 40 per cent reduction in 'Killed and Seriously Injured' (KSI) at camera sites. This year's report will claim a much lower figures, for which Safe Speed claimed credit by pulling the DfT up on last year's bad science.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign said: "The truth is that speed cameras make road safety worse. We will continue to chip away at their bad science until we dig down to the truth. Next year's report will show an even smaller 'benefit'. Anyway, if they said '40 per cent' last year, and this year they say much less, why should we believe a single word they say? They are clearly far too worried about a) face saving and b) looking after the dangerous and flawed camera partnership quangos. This policy must be stopped. Lives depend on it."
Smith added: "The speed camera programme has been an unmitigated disaster. The supporting science has been bunk, the foundation claims have been bunk, and the road safety results have been disastrous disappointing. The Department for Transport has failed in its duty to provide effective road safety policies, preferring to fiddle and fudge in a misguided attempt to convince the public that its fatally flawed road safety policies are effective. The only way to restore road safety values and public confidence is for DfT to come clean, admit their mistakes, and scrap the entire speed camera programme."
Links
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