Following the publication yesterday of the UK House of Commons Transport Committee report on roads policing, safety campaign Safe Speed slammed the authors for "failing to understand the road safety evidence surrounding speed cameras."
According to campaign founder Paul Smith, "a proper examination of the figures indicates without doubt that speed cameras have failed catastrophically as a road safety intervention."
- Claimed benefits at speed camera sites are massively dominated by a statistical bias called 'regression to the mean' (RTTM). The figure quoted by Transport Committee is a large overestimate of benefit and a large underestimate of RTTM.
- Only 1 in 20 crashes involves a vehicle exceeding a speed limit
- Road deaths have not fallen as expected, and Transport Research Laboratory says 'drivers are getting worse'. Safe Speed says that drivers are getting worse because we are giving them false safety information and causing excessive concentration on legal targets rather than safety targets.
- The British Medical Journal reported in June that hospitalisations of road crash victims haven't fallen for a decade.
- Our national fatal accident rate (the number who die on the roads per billion vehicle kilometres driven; the basic measure of 'risk') has departed from its long term reliable downwards trend. If the trend had continued, national annual road deaths would be down to about 2,000 per annum by now. We're 1,200 lives per year behind expectation.
- Responsible drivers do not even need a speedo to drive safely - the sort of speed that they control -- appropriate speed -- is neither controlled nor definable in miles per hour. Just ask whether 30mph is an appropriate speed, and it is clear the question cannot be answered without far more information.
- Irresponsible drivers come in many different forms, and probably 99 per cent of those forms cannot be detected by camera.
- The process of driving is one of 'skilled risk management' and with 200,000 injury crashes each year amongst at least 32 million licensed drivers, risks are by and large extremely well managed. The basic risk of causing an injury crash across the whole system is (32m/200,000) once in 160 years. Yet if a driver shuts his eyes for just 20 seconds a crash is virtually inevitable.
- Speed cameras come with a vast range of side effects, yet none of them have been officially studied even after having them on our roads for 15 years. Safe Speed has a carefully constructed list of 30 negative side effects. These side effects tend to worsen driver quality.
- 'Excessive speed crashes' are actually increasing in the speed camera era. This is no surprise to us, because having an excessive speed crash is a 'driver quality' issue.
- British road safety is currently the slowest improving in Europe (EU15) according to official figures.
- The claim that '20 per cent of child pedestrians die in 30mph impacts' is true, but used in a grossly misleading way, because in the real world impacts are not commonly taking place at free travelling speeds. With around 50 child pedestrian deaths in built up areas annually against some 11,000 cases of injury, it is clear that we are not running into them at 30mph or more. If we were we would have expected at least 2,200 fatalities - a very far cry from the real-world figure of about 50.
Smith said: "Current road safety policy is an unmitigated disaster supported only by dodgy statistics and blind faith. A decent analysis of Department for Transport's own information shows starkly just how badly we are doing. I am shocked that the Transport Committee has not taken the trouble to ensure that it understands the statistics that it quotes.
"If it weren't a serious road safety issue, it would be amusing that there are calls to place cameras where there have been no crashes. Firstly, any valuable road safety intervention should not be wasted on locations where, for whatever reason, crashes are not taking place. It is analogous to claiming that a drug is so good that we should start giving it to healthy patients. Secondly it will destroy what little reputation speed cameras have left, because if you place them where there have been no crashes, then crashes can only go up.
"Speed cameras have failed to make the roads safer. They have replaced valuable life saving policies and concentrated resources on the wrong safety factor. They must now be scrapped."
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