"Monster cameras"
Discussion
The Daily Telegraph said:
Ignore the 'statistics': speed cameras are a monstrous injustice
By Tom Utley
(Filed: 18/06/2004)
Nobody who does much driving in Britain these days will be surprised by the news that, in hundreds of places, the number of serious accidents has increased since the introduction of speed cameras. Very often, it is motorists such as me (although not you, I am sure) who are to blame.
We drive along at what we judge to be a safe speed. Then we catch sight of one of those menacing yellow boxes on their grey stalks, take our eyes off the road and the rear-view mirror to check the speedometer, and slam on the anchors. Before we know it - wham! - the bonnet of the car behind has thumped us up the backside.
This hasn't happened to me yet, touch wood, but you have only to approach a speed camera on a free-flowing road to realise that it must happen fairly often. Suddenly, every driver in front applies the brakes, and slows to precisely 40mph, or whatever the limit may be.
I know that I will get letters from readers who say that they have never, ever done anything so irresponsible as to break a speed limit. All I can say is that they are never about when I am on the road. In my experience, at least two thirds of drivers exceed the limit habitually - and this proportion rises to 80 per cent or more in light traffic on dual carriageways.
On those rare occasions when everyone on a camera-free road is observing the limit to within one mph, you can be absolutely sure that there is a police car up ahead. I sometimes think that the police tootle along dual carriageways at exactly 70mph, mile after mile, just for the pleasure of annoying everybody behind. When they go off duty, and get behind the wheel of their own private cars, I bet they break the limit, like almost everyone else.
The truth is, of course - although never officially acknowledged - that most of the time it is perfectly safe to exceed the speed limit by a margin of at least 20 per cent. It must also be said that, in some conditions, it is extremely dangerous to drive at the legally permitted limit.
That is what is so unjust about speed cameras. These lumps of metal and wire cannot distinguish between somebody driving safely at 80mph, on a clear dry road, and a maniac tail-gating at the same speed in a blizzard.
The penalty for both - the careful driver and the potential killer - is almost always the same: a fine and three penalty points on their licences. Four strikes and the offender is off the road for a year, which for many can mean losing their livelihood.
At the last count, about a million drivers had chalked up nine points on their licences. One more flash from an idiot machine, and they will have to kiss goodbye to their right to drive.
In the smoking room at The Telegraph, where these matters are debated in great depth, the weight of opinion, when the latest figures emerged from the Department of Transport, was against me.
Yes, we all agreed that we hated speed cameras. We all agreed, too, that some of them caused accidents rather than simply failed to prevent them (the figures for the Thames Valley police area, where serious accidents had increased in very nearly half of the places where speed cameras had been installed, made that point powerfully).
Nobody disputed, either, that the cameras were an underhand means of raising money for the Treasury, or that the penalties for breaking the limit were indiscriminate and often unjust.
A couple of contributors to the debate pointed out that a new practice had grown up, whereby people who had been caught by the cameras made their husbands or wives take the rap and the penalty points for their fourth offences, to avoid losing their licences. We all agreed that this was very bad.
But, oh, said the great majority, didn't the figures also show that overall fatalities were down by 40 per cent - about 100 lives - in those locations where cameras had been installed? Wasn't that justification enough? Shouldn't we be prepared to endure the gaze of Big Brother, dislike it though we may, if it prevented more deaths than it caused?
The answer to that is that, if you stick up a camera where an accident has been, and there happens to be no accident there the following year, that hardly proves that it was the camera that cut road deaths by 100 per cent, year-on-year. The figure of 100 lives saved may sound impressive, but when you take into account all the variables that cause accidents - weather conditions, tiredness or the behaviour of the children in the back seat - it is barely statistically significant.
There may be a slight correlation between the presence of speed cameras and an overall fall in accident figures. But the correlation is at least equally strong, in particular locations, between the presence of the cameras and an increase in the number of accidents.
What is more, the deaths that may have been caused by the cameras are specific. The lives saved by the cameras are non-specific and theoretical: maybe yours, maybe mine, maybe nobody's.
If they show anything, this week's figures from the DoT suggest that the case for speed cameras as life-savers remains unproved. Why, then, are so many people prepared to accept them, along with all the injustices and expense that they cause, without even bothering to analyse the evidence properly?
All too many of us seem to be seized by a sort of collective guilt, which makes us acquiesce in things that we dislike. We tell the pollsters that we would welcome paying more taxes for education and health; smokers say that they approve of bans on smoking; drivers claim to approve of speed cameras and road humps.
We say these things because we think that it would be naughty to tell the pollsters what we really think.
"What price a human life?" wail the authorities, to justify every new imposition on the British people. Sixty years after D-Day, many of us seem to have forgotten that other important question: "What price freedom?"
Streaky
Good! More anti-camera publicity. At last someone at a national paper has had the time to study the figures behind the hype. Perhaps the Sun will now take up the cause and get it to a wider audience. If we could get a huge backlash against the latest whitewash then where would the government hide?
Fantastic article, at last the press seem to be raising this topic
How did you know he was drunk if he drove off
Hardcore2000 said:
a few years back i went towards a camera and spotted it at the last minute at about 11pm on a friday night. I breaked hard and a drink driver smashed into the back of my car and drove off. Police found that the car was not properly registered. thank you speed camera
How did you know he was drunk if he drove off
mean'n'roofless said:
Fantastic article, at last the press seem to be raising this topic
Hardcore2000 said:
a few years back i went towards a camera and spotted it at the last minute at about 11pm on a friday night. I breaked hard and a drink driver smashed into the back of my car and drove off. Police found that the car was not properly registered. thank you speed camera
How did you know he was drunk if he drove off
He had one of those "Drunk on board" stickers in his back windows
Guy's n gals'.
We cannot give up this fight. Remember the poll tax?
People felt so strongly about it they were willing to do a stretch for it. ( not saying we resort to that )Won in the end though.
We Brits keep on and on taking sh*t until we can take no more and snap.
The Germans eg on the other hand tend to complain straight away.
If the question of scamera's went to court, the evidence aginst them would at worse, be sufficient for "reasonable doubt "
We cannot give up this fight. Remember the poll tax?
People felt so strongly about it they were willing to do a stretch for it. ( not saying we resort to that )Won in the end though.
We Brits keep on and on taking sh*t until we can take no more and snap.
The Germans eg on the other hand tend to complain straight away.
If the question of scamera's went to court, the evidence aginst them would at worse, be sufficient for "reasonable doubt "
What is needed is for one of the tabloids to properly analyse the DfT report, find the instances where a camera has done nothing to reduce accidents (or even increased them), then run a huge spread naming and shaming the locations, how many fines each camera has dished out and SCPs who operate them. Perhaps then the 40% reduction claim would be viewed with the contempt it deserves.
Interesting to note that the Guardian was claiming the figure of 245 ineffective cameras represented one in twenty of the total, but rather handily forgot to mention that a) the report covered nothing like the whole camera population and b) the 700+ cameras the DfT chose to ignore where accidents had incresed, just because they hadn't been there long enough. Poor research or deliberately misleading reporting? Hmmm.
Interesting to note that the Guardian was claiming the figure of 245 ineffective cameras represented one in twenty of the total, but rather handily forgot to mention that a) the report covered nothing like the whole camera population and b) the 700+ cameras the DfT chose to ignore where accidents had incresed, just because they hadn't been there long enough. Poor research or deliberately misleading reporting? Hmmm.
Exactly!
Excellent article and one hopes the pro-lobby take note of it!
"What price freedom?" per article. Indeed!
Hitler, Stalin and Honecker - laughing in their graves!
"We tell pollsters what they like to hear" suggests the journalist. True!
The wording of these polls, fact that not a random poll anyway (per Manchester Eevening News - two weeks back: "2332 polled are regularly polled by police". Of these 56% returned the questionnaire and 75% were pro-scamera.
Skewed result? You bet!
Should be random - and questions should be impartial.
And all data should be analysed properly.
Excellent article and one hopes the pro-lobby take note of it!
"What price freedom?" per article. Indeed!
Hitler, Stalin and Honecker - laughing in their graves!
"We tell pollsters what they like to hear" suggests the journalist. True!
The wording of these polls, fact that not a random poll anyway (per Manchester Eevening News - two weeks back: "2332 polled are regularly polled by police". Of these 56% returned the questionnaire and 75% were pro-scamera.
Skewed result? You bet!
Should be random - and questions should be impartial.
And all data should be analysed properly.
Yeah but what can we do. The general public seems very apathetic about this and dont forget that most people on the road dont actually give this anymore thought than they do to driving courteously.
I actually think the Great British driving population deserves these things because the standards of driving and the lack of courtesy I see on British roads is far worse than the standards I see in Europe, they drive fast in Europe but most people do tend to get out of the way and are at least aware of others on the road, in Britain though we do seem to have a problem. I can drive all day through France and if I'm motoring then people in front do tend to move back into the inside lane after every overtake, but once you get off the ferry into Blighty we have 5% of the cars on the inside lane, 40% on the middle lane and 55% on the outside lane and nobody with any courtesy to other road users.
I think we'd be better off fighting for more education of road users and having DoT examiners checked more often - I think it would be good that we had a database with all accidents on it that could be cross referenced with the driving examiner and see that we are actually being tested properly because some people are not fit to drive a car.
Also re-testing every 5 years would be good to get some idiots off the road and remind everybody else as to the finer points of road use that some people seem unaware of eg lane discipline on the motorways, when turning right etc etc
Also any revenue received from cameras should only be used in education. When was the last time we saw any expenditure on this but they're raking it in.
However when they're making this much money - can anybody honestly think that they're going to give up this revenue?
I actually think the Great British driving population deserves these things because the standards of driving and the lack of courtesy I see on British roads is far worse than the standards I see in Europe, they drive fast in Europe but most people do tend to get out of the way and are at least aware of others on the road, in Britain though we do seem to have a problem. I can drive all day through France and if I'm motoring then people in front do tend to move back into the inside lane after every overtake, but once you get off the ferry into Blighty we have 5% of the cars on the inside lane, 40% on the middle lane and 55% on the outside lane and nobody with any courtesy to other road users.
I think we'd be better off fighting for more education of road users and having DoT examiners checked more often - I think it would be good that we had a database with all accidents on it that could be cross referenced with the driving examiner and see that we are actually being tested properly because some people are not fit to drive a car.
Also re-testing every 5 years would be good to get some idiots off the road and remind everybody else as to the finer points of road use that some people seem unaware of eg lane discipline on the motorways, when turning right etc etc
Also any revenue received from cameras should only be used in education. When was the last time we saw any expenditure on this but they're raking it in.
However when they're making this much money - can anybody honestly think that they're going to give up this revenue?
There is definately mixed feelings on scamera's though.
eg Discussion at work reveals replies like " If you keep to the speed limits there is no problem." About half think they are a good idea. Most don't seem to spend much time even thinking about them. Good old Brits eh, whatever the authorities say, MUST be true.
I then ask " So you would be happy if all speed limits are reduced, and reduced, and reduced. The typical reply is "You have only yourself to blame if you get scammed. They don't know how to answer this question.
The spin machine is working well, and we can only hope that sensible, honest, journalism will prevail.
Hang on a minute, got to go.........just saw a pig ( no offence meant Tonyrec/Gone/Dibble etc ) fly past the window.
eg Discussion at work reveals replies like " If you keep to the speed limits there is no problem." About half think they are a good idea. Most don't seem to spend much time even thinking about them. Good old Brits eh, whatever the authorities say, MUST be true.
I then ask " So you would be happy if all speed limits are reduced, and reduced, and reduced. The typical reply is "You have only yourself to blame if you get scammed. They don't know how to answer this question.
The spin machine is working well, and we can only hope that sensible, honest, journalism will prevail.
Hang on a minute, got to go.........just saw a pig ( no offence meant Tonyrec/Gone/Dibble etc ) fly past the window.
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