RE: Road safety getting worse: research
Tuesday 22nd March 2005
New research from the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) confirms that, in the speed camera era, drivers are getting worse and worse at avoiding big crashes. Road safety campaign Safe Speed argues that this is one critical road safety issue it has been core to its campaign.
Road safety getting worse: research
Camera campaign blames poor safety policy
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Image courtesy www.speedcam.co.uk |
Safe Speed notes that the research stops short of explaining why drivers are getting worse but suggests that one credible explanation is that poor road safety policy is responsible. Modern policy, concentrating on restrictions, dangerously ignores the vital contribution to road safety of skills, attitudes and responsibilities from all road users, said Safe Speed.
Campaign founder Paul Smith said, "We're handing out more restrictions and more penalties coupled with grossly oversimplified road safety messages. It should be transparently obvious that such policies will have dangerous side effects. Drivers are under pressure and of course they aren't performing as well. But that's not all - we're also missing out on the benefits of good policies - it's a deadly double whammy that has claimed about 8,000 lives so far."
Smith said, "We're entitled to see the ongoing benefit of fast improving vehicle safety, but the reduction in the quality of driving is more than offsetting the benefit and deaths are going up. Traffic is increasing, but the growth in traffic is small compared to these effects."
"Speed cameras are the foundation of the bad policy," said Smith. "Without the cameras we'd never have made the fatal mistakes. It's absolutely vital that we get back to the policies and the expertise that gave us in the UK the safest roads in the world in the first place. We have to start by recognising the failure and scrapping the cameras."
Safe Speed said its research and analysis explains exactly where road safety policy has gone wrong in considerable detail and that the new TRL research simply confirms a basic finding made by Safe Speed well over three years ago.
Safe Speed said it had issued various challenges to the authorities to discuss the matter in public debate. "Let's have the facts out in the open", said Smith. "Speed camera tickets are going through the ceiling. We're having more excessive speed crashes. More people are dying. The camera proponents are spinning like tops to try to convince us that their jobs are worthwhile."
Related story: www.pistonheads.com/speed/default.asp?storyId=9870
Discussion
thing that makes me laugh, they argue that its for safety to lower speed limts for stopping distances etc. but the 70mph speed limit was set for cars such as i duno, a morris minor? which fair enough would take a couple of weeks to stop from that speed, but you look at the enhancements of braking systems of the current cars that people drive around in,
i know not everyone drives one but an evo6 i think is something like 0-60 then 60-0 in bout 12 seconds,
yeah i argree near a school etc 20 is the fastest you would ever want to drive, but surely you would be more alert looking at the type of road your driving into, as said above rather than looking for a gatso or plod with a radar
i know not everyone drives one but an evo6 i think is something like 0-60 then 60-0 in bout 12 seconds,
yeah i argree near a school etc 20 is the fastest you would ever want to drive, but surely you would be more alert looking at the type of road your driving into, as said above rather than looking for a gatso or plod with a radar
I don't know why PH didn't include the link to the TRL research, but here it is:
www.trl.co.uk/static/dtlr/pdfs/trl629.pdf
It's strong confirmation of a central part of the Safe Speed case.
www.trl.co.uk/static/dtlr/pdfs/trl629.pdf
It's strong confirmation of a central part of the Safe Speed case.
This is a bit of an oversimplification, but the camera situation is a small part of a huge problem. If I had my way, I`d sack the whole f...g government, civil sevice etc, etc, and start again with a fresh administration. This is yet another area where the beaurocrats have gone too far. We all know were being bled dry to pay for these blood suckers. I do appreciate that these people are trying to do there best however, but the whole sysyem has just got so overcomplicated, with too many layers, common sense does not prevail anymore.
We are all independant individuals, and cannot be controlled like machines. Driving too close, too fast in the wrong place, etc, etc, is plain stupid, and does result in unnecesary horrific deaths and injuries, but the solution is not control, but is surely education. This is where the government, (and previous governments and their snivel servants) have failed their employers (us lot!).
I guess they do not want to educate too much though (despite the political commentry), because if we had too much information, they could not be able to control us!! Sounds like we are going round in circles here, just like the f....g country.
Oooo, it makes your blood boil.
We are all independant individuals, and cannot be controlled like machines. Driving too close, too fast in the wrong place, etc, etc, is plain stupid, and does result in unnecesary horrific deaths and injuries, but the solution is not control, but is surely education. This is where the government, (and previous governments and their snivel servants) have failed their employers (us lot!).
I guess they do not want to educate too much though (despite the political commentry), because if we had too much information, they could not be able to control us!! Sounds like we are going round in circles here, just like the f....g country.
Oooo, it makes your blood boil.
wilberforce said:
thing that makes me laugh, they argue that its for safety to lower speed limts for stopping distances etc. but the 70mph speed limit was set for cars such as i duno, a morris minor? which fair enough would take a couple of weeks to stop from that speed, but you look at the enhancements of braking systems of the current cars that people drive around in,
Yes, but the poor standard of driving today means that drivers are now bumper-to-bumper at 70mph leaving nowhere near the correct stopping distance, even for these modern cars with effective brakes. If we kept a decent distance then for sure, limits could be raised.
wilberforce said:
i know not everyone drives one but an evo6 i think is something like 0-60 then 60-0 in bout 12 seconds,
Must be a lot less time than this - my mate's Evo can do 0-60 in 4.4 secs and will stop a lot quicker than this, so the 0-60-0 dash ought to be no more than 7 or 8 seconds.
wilberforce said:
yeah i argree near a school etc 20 is the fastest you would ever want to drive, but surely you would be more alert looking at the type of road your driving into, as said above rather than looking for a gatso or plod with a radar
In an ideal world, yes, but sadly most people - even when free from speed checks - don't seem to be paying attention to appropriate speeds, hence the point that SafeSpeed makes about driver training. If drivers all could read the road and drive appropriately then crash rates would fall without speed cameras but because we don't, they're imposed to catch the least attentive speeders.
Wonder whether this report will lead to anything positive, or just be forgotten about in the mists of time...
Go SafeSpeed! Keep needling away with your excellent, rational message. Eventually someone will listen, hopefully.
>> Edited by sublimatica on Tuesday 22 March 13:42
Richard C said:
i know not everyone drives one but an evo6 i think is something like 0-60 then 60-0 in bout 12 seconds
On dry tarmac an Evo6 RS 0-60 average acceleration is about 0.68G or 3.9 sec and deceleration 60-0 is about 0.96G or 2.8 sec.
ok so my "ish" was a bit out, but you get the general point tho stops quicker than a eg a morris!!!
Streetcop said:
A large number of road deaths since the early 90s are as a result of the boom in m/cycle ownership....
The warmer weather is already bringing our two-wheeled cousins out and i've already attended one dead rider.....
Getting ready for the warm summer of death...
There has been an increasoing in motorcycle use that comes close to corresponding with the increase in deaths. Deaths are up from around 400pa in the early 90s to about 600pa now. The increase of 200 deaths is undoubtedly a tragedy, but it's nowhere near to explaining the problem.
If the former trends had continued road deaths overall would be down to about 2,200 each year by now - there's a gap of 1,300 unexplained deaths each year now and the TRL report says it's because drivers are getting worse.
And who's responsible for drivers getting worse? It's the policy makers.
As much as I'm in favour of more trafpol than cameras....
Blaming policy makers for the increase in road deaths is just not on...
Poor driving, be it excess speed, drink driving, due care or whatever....is the cause of the majority of collisions/accidents...
Regardless of your campaign for less cameras etc etc....there's no getting away from the fact that nobody likes to be blamed for things..and driving standards is the biggy.
Call a man's wife, his home, his football team etc..no problems. Tell him he's a bad driver and you'll have a fight on your hands..
Perhaps, just perhaps, we (the motorist) are the maker of our own doom behind the wheel.
I for one certainly think that...and I'm not a perfect driver by any stretch of the imagination.
Blaming policy makers for the increase in road deaths is just not on...
Poor driving, be it excess speed, drink driving, due care or whatever....is the cause of the majority of collisions/accidents...
Regardless of your campaign for less cameras etc etc....there's no getting away from the fact that nobody likes to be blamed for things..and driving standards is the biggy.
Call a man's wife, his home, his football team etc..no problems. Tell him he's a bad driver and you'll have a fight on your hands..
Perhaps, just perhaps, we (the motorist) are the maker of our own doom behind the wheel.
I for one certainly think that...and I'm not a perfect driver by any stretch of the imagination.
Streetcop said:
As much as I'm in favour of more trafpol than cameras....
Blaming policy makers for the increase in road deaths is just not on...
Poor driving, be it excess speed, drink driving, due care or whatever....is the cause of the majority of collisions/accidents...
Regardless of your campaign for less cameras etc etc....there's no getting away from the fact that nobody likes to be blamed for things..and driving standards is the biggy.
Call a man's wife, his home, his football team etc..no problems. Tell him he's a bad driver and you'll have a fight on your hands..
Perhaps, just perhaps, we (the motorist) are the maker of our own doom behind the wheel.
I for one certainly think that...and I'm not a perfect driver by any stretch of the imagination.
Yes and no. I don't mind as long as there's consistency. The problem is the Scumera mob want to take the credit when the figures go in their favour, and blame everyone else when it doesn't.
e.g.
Scumera
=======
Deaths down - Cameras are working
Deaths up - We need more cameras to make people safe
(and to be fair)
Anti-Camera
===========
Deaths down - due to better driving/statistical flukes etc.
Deaths up - its the cameras fault.
The *reality* is that you cannot make anything of the Scumera figures. They are simply too small to get any kind of overall pattern out of (remember the Cambridgeshire site ?) and too prone to large swings on minor figures and other things.
Example 1: Norfolk touted the Grapes Hill scamera as a success. They had had in 3 years before installation 7 KSI accidents (1.33 per year), and none in the 6 months after.
Notwithstanding the obvious statistical stupidity, a single head on collision with 2 KSIs would mean that the KSI rate for that junction would be 4 per year (2 in 6 months), so the anti-scamera could equally well say "there are 3 times as many KSI as there were before". (1.33 x 3 = 4)
This is of course as
witted as the Scamera partnership arguments. Example 2: The other big improvement was the fixed Camera at the Ketteringham junction on the A11. There actually is no fixed Camera at the Ketteringham junction on the A11 (gives you some idea of the honesty of the Norfolk Scumera Pratnership), however the Scumera van is sometimes on a bridge one mile away from the junction. However, the statistical fraud here is not that, it is that at that junction the left turn has been blocked off, so reducing the turning movements there significantly.
Streetcop said:
Blaming policy makers for the increase in road deaths is just not on...
Poor driving, be it excess speed, drink driving, due care or whatever....is the cause of the majority of collisions/accidents...
That's highly illogical Mr Scop.
Do you mean to suggest that policy will have NO INFLUENCE on road safety?
Yes, often individuals are to blame for bad driving, but there's a reason that our motorways are four times safer than those in Belgium, and that reason is our previous good policy. The right training, information, advice and policing all contributed to good national average standards.
Or perhaps you think we earned the safest roads in the world by random chance?
CTE said:And it's going to get worse (especialy if the idiots return B'liar again). The £35b 'Big Lie' that was in the headlines a couple of days ago is predicated on a Labour government spending 40% of tax revenue by 2012 on the emergency services. Which might not be so bad, if only it were spent on police officers on the beat, ambulance drivers and paramedics who can respond in time to save more lives, nurses and doctors on the wards and in the theatres, GPs who turn out at night and dentists you don't have to queue round the block for ... instead of more bureaucrats who spend their time fiddling the figures to show they're meeting government targets (which they're not!).
... If I had my way, I`d sack the whole f...g government, civil sevice etc, etc, and start again with a fresh administration. This is yet another area where the beaurocrats have gone too far. We all know were being bled dry to pay for these blood suckers ...
Now, 40% is a LOT of your money!
Streaky
I posted about this yesterday
[url]www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=164586&f=23&h=0[/url]
but nobody paid any attention...
I agree that it seems to indicate that resources are being concentrated too much in one particular area (speed - the easy one) without looking at other factors (which are not so easy)
[url]www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=164586&f=23&h=0[/url]
but nobody paid any attention...
I agree that it seems to indicate that resources are being concentrated too much in one particular area (speed - the easy one) without looking at other factors (which are not so easy)
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