M4 Speed camera's a mistake.......

[likesbikes]

[quote=Article in Swindon local paper]New research from the Association of British Drivers has branded the M4 speed cameras in Wiltshire a mistake.

The road safety group was charged £111 for access to vital info about the causes of crashes which, it believes, should have been made public.

In data provided by Wiltshire Police, driver inattention topped the list of accident causes, followed by poor lane changing and careless/reckless behaviour.

Not one accident had excess speed as the sole cause, although it was a contributory factor factor in accidents.

The organisation says it is wrong that Wiltshire and Swindon Camera Safety Partnership is allowed to include any accident in its statistics to justify cameras even in cases where speed was not an issue.


Included in the list of crashes were:

[bullet]An accident where a pedestrian fell from a bridge.[/bullet]
[bullet]An accident where a gust of wind pushed one lorry into another.[/bullet]
[bullet]Several tyre blow-outs.[/bullet]
[bullet]A crash where a car drove the wrong way up the motorway.[/bullet]

Mark McArthur-Christie, the ABD's road safety spokesman, said speed was not a significant factor.

"These figures show that cameras on the M4 will do absolutely nothing for road safety" he said. "This data - now we've forced it into the public domain - raises very serious questions about the use of cameras on the M4. It also raises questions about why the data was not made public before."

ABD chairman Brian Gregory said ""This work shows clearly that we need to get away from the whole 'The answers a speed camera, now whats the question?' approach to road safety. We also want to see them forced to publish the causes of crashes they use to justify cameras."[/quote]


[quote=Data from the Wiltshire Constabulary]
The major causes of M4 crashes between 1999 and 2004 were:

[bullet]Inattention - a factor in 28 per cent of crashes.[/bullet]
[bullet]Failure to judge others path or speed (ie - poor lane changing) - a factor in 28 per cent of crashes.[/bullet]
[bullet]Lack of judgement of own path - a factor in 17 per cent of crashes.[/bullet]
[bullet]Fatigue - a factor in 14 per cent of crashes.[/bullet]
[bullet]Careless, thoughtless or reckless behaviour - a factor in 14 per cent of crashes.[/bullet]
[bullet]Excess speed - a factor in 14 per cent of crashes. "excess speed" is speed which is too fast for the conditions as well as speed in excess of the limit. As such it is impossible to find out how many crashes were caused by drivers exceeding the limit and how many by drivers going too fast for the conditions.[/bullet][/quote]

[MMC]

Thanks Likesbikes - which local was it in? I spoke to the Advertiser (along with quite a few others) yesterday...