Discussion
The roadhog right cannot deny it: speed cameras work
The government should be proud of its record on reducing road deaths
Polly Toynbee
Wednesday January 14, 2004
The Guardian
The roadhog right is a peculiar beast: its conviction that freedom to drive fast is God-given inhabits the same quirk in rightwing brains as their belief in freedom not to pay taxes. So speed cameras are to them the perfect devilish red plot against the innocent speeding middle classes.
The Times, Mail, Sun, Telegraph and the rest have been foaming at the mouth over speed cameras for the last year - despite, or because of, the cameras' ever-greater success at slowing down drivers, collecting fines and cutting road deaths. Yesterday their road rage knew no bounds as the home secretary defiantly proposed a £5-£30 surcharge on top of existing fixed penalties for drivers. It was a rare moment when David Blunkett faced down a populist campaign.
The extra fines will go to a fund offering support for crime victims with much-needed money for Victim Support, rape crisis centres, women's refuges and an ombudsman for victims and witnesses who feel badly treated. Brake, the road safety campaign, is delighted that there will be money at last for the bereaved of traffic accidents, who are often left with no practical help once the police have delivered their terrible news. The wrath of the roadhog right has been most enjoyable: after all, they are usually the ones complaining that all the sympathy goes to understanding criminals too much and the victims too little.
But then they are not rational beasts; they want to drive fast, end of story. The cacophony of bluster about speed-camera highway robbery is wonderfully contrary from the very same papers that hype up public terror over any tiny new risk they can find - except for the one clear and present danger that faces us all every day of our lives, the killer car.
Forget toxic salmon, death-dealing deodorants, lethal neon lighting and the thousand other front-page shock-horrors that offer us a daily fright. This is what to fear: you stand a one in 200 chance of dying horribly and brutally on the roads. (It says so in bold type on the back of the Highway Code.) Every year 3,600 die, and around 40,000 suffer serious injury. Roads are the biggest killer of 12- to 16-year-olds.
Now compare that to the mere 800 who have died of Sars worldwide, causing global panic and economic calamity. Road accidents are not acts of God, but a man-made horror that can and is being reduced with man-made measures by this government. It is one of Labour's big success stories - just about their only transport success. A target to cut death and injury by 40% by 2010 had already reached one third of that by the end of 2002. Two-thirds of the target to reduce child deaths by 50% has also already been reached years early.
But road deaths fail to frighten; they have never been high politics, compared with GM, mad cow or cancer waiting times. It is extraordinary how little this splattering of human body parts on the roads frightens the very same newspapers that love to terrify their readers. But if any of their scares from obscure, unrepeated tests on rats had a death rate like the roads, there would be mass hysteria. What's more, if most of the deaths were preventable, yet the negligent government did nothing, it would cause instant regime change at Westminster.
But cars are in a zone somewhere outside the normal rules of politics, panic and blame. The bizarre anti-speed-camera campaign sweeps along usually sensible commentators in its car-mad wake. Their outrage focuses on the idea that this is a new "stealth tax" to be paid by "motorists whose offences are usually victimless". The Mail leader yesterday stormed: "Isn't it time the police focused on catching violent criminals rather than acting as uniformed tax collectors?"
Simon Jenkins calls speed cameras the Dick Turpins of the highways, nabbing law-abiding middle-class folk doing a couple of miles over the speed limit on empty straight stretches at night just to land cash for the chancellor (42% of road deaths are at night). As for "victimless" speeding, some might not think so, including parents of the 200 children killed annually - the equivalent of more than 13 Dunblanes every year.
The irrefutable proven facts are these: higher speeds mean more crashes and more deaths. A pedestrian struck by a car going 20mph has a 90% chance of survival. At 30mph, that chance of surviving drops to 50%, and at every mph over that it drops very rapidly, reaching just a 10% life chance at 40mph. Has every driver in the land speeded at some time? Yes, probably. Should we? No. Is it bang to rights if we get caught? Of course. Does catching people make them drive slower in future? Certainly. Speed cameras have cut deaths by 35%, despite spurious arguments that they are all in the wrong places, or some outrageous abuse of statistics purporting to show that they actually increase road deaths.
Widely quoted factoids from the drivers' lobbies include some straight untruths. The RAC claims those caught by cameras are middle-aged male company car drivers doing high mileage, whereas young drivers cause most accidents. The figures show it is these same middle-aged company car men who are also 50% more likely to be involved in accidents than others, even after their longer road hours are discounted.
Overconfident men cause crashes, old and young, of all car-owning classes. Another fox to be shot is the claim that cameras are a big tax revenue spinner. Local police and councils only keep enough to cover the cost of the cameras, the Treasury only gets a small surplus; £73m came in from camera fines last year and there was only a measly £7m for the Treasury. Hardly worth inciting roadhog fury, if cameras didn't save lives.
The government is entirely right to ignore the noise of the drivers - and the Tories and Lib Dems look cynically opportunistic for trying to attach themselves to the anti-camera brigade. They plainly haven't examined the six main polls taken on this subject, which show consistently that three-quarters of the public support speed cameras.
That's just as well, for this highly efficient policing is about to be greatly expanded. Following pilot trials, a new generation of digital cameras can catch 3,000 car number plates an hour, automatically checking them against police computers, ready to despatch nearby police cars after millions of unlicensed, uninsured or disqualified drivers, as well as stolen cars and suspected criminals. In the pilots it has lead to a tenfold increase in arrests, with large amounts of stolen property recovered and car crime cut sharply.
The Treasury wouldn't put up the money for it - they increasingly demand all new initiatives must be self-financing. So the new higher fixed penalties will pay for new cameras that are becoming one of the most effective and efficient forms of policing. All this is cause for celebration: Britain now has one of the lowest road accident and death rates in Europe.
The government should be proud of its record on reducing road deaths
Polly Toynbee
Wednesday January 14, 2004
The Guardian
The roadhog right is a peculiar beast: its conviction that freedom to drive fast is God-given inhabits the same quirk in rightwing brains as their belief in freedom not to pay taxes. So speed cameras are to them the perfect devilish red plot against the innocent speeding middle classes.
The Times, Mail, Sun, Telegraph and the rest have been foaming at the mouth over speed cameras for the last year - despite, or because of, the cameras' ever-greater success at slowing down drivers, collecting fines and cutting road deaths. Yesterday their road rage knew no bounds as the home secretary defiantly proposed a £5-£30 surcharge on top of existing fixed penalties for drivers. It was a rare moment when David Blunkett faced down a populist campaign.
The extra fines will go to a fund offering support for crime victims with much-needed money for Victim Support, rape crisis centres, women's refuges and an ombudsman for victims and witnesses who feel badly treated. Brake, the road safety campaign, is delighted that there will be money at last for the bereaved of traffic accidents, who are often left with no practical help once the police have delivered their terrible news. The wrath of the roadhog right has been most enjoyable: after all, they are usually the ones complaining that all the sympathy goes to understanding criminals too much and the victims too little.
But then they are not rational beasts; they want to drive fast, end of story. The cacophony of bluster about speed-camera highway robbery is wonderfully contrary from the very same papers that hype up public terror over any tiny new risk they can find - except for the one clear and present danger that faces us all every day of our lives, the killer car.
Forget toxic salmon, death-dealing deodorants, lethal neon lighting and the thousand other front-page shock-horrors that offer us a daily fright. This is what to fear: you stand a one in 200 chance of dying horribly and brutally on the roads. (It says so in bold type on the back of the Highway Code.) Every year 3,600 die, and around 40,000 suffer serious injury. Roads are the biggest killer of 12- to 16-year-olds.
Now compare that to the mere 800 who have died of Sars worldwide, causing global panic and economic calamity. Road accidents are not acts of God, but a man-made horror that can and is being reduced with man-made measures by this government. It is one of Labour's big success stories - just about their only transport success. A target to cut death and injury by 40% by 2010 had already reached one third of that by the end of 2002. Two-thirds of the target to reduce child deaths by 50% has also already been reached years early.
But road deaths fail to frighten; they have never been high politics, compared with GM, mad cow or cancer waiting times. It is extraordinary how little this splattering of human body parts on the roads frightens the very same newspapers that love to terrify their readers. But if any of their scares from obscure, unrepeated tests on rats had a death rate like the roads, there would be mass hysteria. What's more, if most of the deaths were preventable, yet the negligent government did nothing, it would cause instant regime change at Westminster.
But cars are in a zone somewhere outside the normal rules of politics, panic and blame. The bizarre anti-speed-camera campaign sweeps along usually sensible commentators in its car-mad wake. Their outrage focuses on the idea that this is a new "stealth tax" to be paid by "motorists whose offences are usually victimless". The Mail leader yesterday stormed: "Isn't it time the police focused on catching violent criminals rather than acting as uniformed tax collectors?"
Simon Jenkins calls speed cameras the Dick Turpins of the highways, nabbing law-abiding middle-class folk doing a couple of miles over the speed limit on empty straight stretches at night just to land cash for the chancellor (42% of road deaths are at night). As for "victimless" speeding, some might not think so, including parents of the 200 children killed annually - the equivalent of more than 13 Dunblanes every year.
The irrefutable proven facts are these: higher speeds mean more crashes and more deaths. A pedestrian struck by a car going 20mph has a 90% chance of survival. At 30mph, that chance of surviving drops to 50%, and at every mph over that it drops very rapidly, reaching just a 10% life chance at 40mph. Has every driver in the land speeded at some time? Yes, probably. Should we? No. Is it bang to rights if we get caught? Of course. Does catching people make them drive slower in future? Certainly. Speed cameras have cut deaths by 35%, despite spurious arguments that they are all in the wrong places, or some outrageous abuse of statistics purporting to show that they actually increase road deaths.
Widely quoted factoids from the drivers' lobbies include some straight untruths. The RAC claims those caught by cameras are middle-aged male company car drivers doing high mileage, whereas young drivers cause most accidents. The figures show it is these same middle-aged company car men who are also 50% more likely to be involved in accidents than others, even after their longer road hours are discounted.
Overconfident men cause crashes, old and young, of all car-owning classes. Another fox to be shot is the claim that cameras are a big tax revenue spinner. Local police and councils only keep enough to cover the cost of the cameras, the Treasury only gets a small surplus; £73m came in from camera fines last year and there was only a measly £7m for the Treasury. Hardly worth inciting roadhog fury, if cameras didn't save lives.
The government is entirely right to ignore the noise of the drivers - and the Tories and Lib Dems look cynically opportunistic for trying to attach themselves to the anti-camera brigade. They plainly haven't examined the six main polls taken on this subject, which show consistently that three-quarters of the public support speed cameras.
That's just as well, for this highly efficient policing is about to be greatly expanded. Following pilot trials, a new generation of digital cameras can catch 3,000 car number plates an hour, automatically checking them against police computers, ready to despatch nearby police cars after millions of unlicensed, uninsured or disqualified drivers, as well as stolen cars and suspected criminals. In the pilots it has lead to a tenfold increase in arrests, with large amounts of stolen property recovered and car crime cut sharply.
The Treasury wouldn't put up the money for it - they increasingly demand all new initiatives must be self-financing. So the new higher fixed penalties will pay for new cameras that are becoming one of the most effective and efficient forms of policing. All this is cause for celebration: Britain now has one of the lowest road accident and death rates in Europe.
Heh the usual drivel and "outrageous abuse of statistics". Apart from this last sentence, which just made me laugh...
We've had the safest roads in Europe for many, many years, but now the rest of the continent is catching up.
The Guardian said:
All this is cause for celebration: Britain now has one of the lowest road accident and death rates in Europe.
We've had the safest roads in Europe for many, many years, but now the rest of the continent is catching up.
Is it just the middle class that speed?
The Scrote class speed but they can't be caught by cameras thanks to dodgey number plates or whatever.
The Middle class speed and pay up.
The Upper class speed and pay up, but don't care.
Everyone speeds apart from Guardian readers, oh and me of course
The Scrote class speed but they can't be caught by cameras thanks to dodgey number plates or whatever.
The Middle class speed and pay up.
The Upper class speed and pay up, but don't care.
Everyone speeds apart from Guardian readers, oh and me of course
she worked on ITV news for years until a younger model came along. This is the offical mouthpiece of New Labour you only haveto look in the jobs page to see this. Jobs for the most stupid of position with little or no worth to society at all.It is typical of the "we know best" brigade
1 in 200 chance of dying brutally and horribly? whats that then, every time you go out? every day? every year? Do you have to be in any particular colour of car? or on a certain road? What exactly is that 'statistic' supposed to mean? Number of total fatal accidents divided by number of licence holders in the UK? 1 in 200 what? It sounds poor odds to me, best stay at home.
Not just Polly Toynbee who is a raving green lentil munching plonker but Paul Kelso
www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=76265&f=23&h=0
www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=76265&f=23&h=0
If you're a Guardian reader, let them know how you feel. Gobshites like Toynbee get their opinions aired regardless of facts or intelligence. To me this merely reflects on the papers editor and is the reason I don't read it.
Similar uninformed bollox was published in the Spectator, a word to the editor got it removed.
Similar uninformed bollox was published in the Spectator, a word to the editor got it removed.
No surprises there then, utter tripe from the Islington set 
. ..........and the total readership of said rag adds up to, not a lot. It's preaching to the converted really, utter waste of paper, unless the author is looking forward to the next round of neu labia back slapping and new year gong allocation .
H
. ..........and the total readership of said rag adds up to, not a lot. It's preaching to the converted really, utter waste of paper, unless the author is looking forward to the next round of neu labia back slapping and new year gong allocation . H
The Gruaniad said:
This is what to fear: you stand a one in 200 chance of dying horribly and brutally on the roads. (It says so in bold type on the back of the Highway Code.) Every year 3,600 die, and around 40,000 suffer serious injury. Roads are the biggest killer of 12- to 16-year-olds.
'ang on a minute - 3,600 die on the roads and you run a 1 in 200 chance of dying in a road crash? Blimey, the population of the country just got smaller - I make that a total UK population of 720,000..... I though the figure was closer to 58MILLION.... that makes the chance of dying on our roads at 1 in 15,000 (approx).... not quite the same figures is it?????
The Gruaniad said:
Still, never let the truth and all of that....
The government is entirely right to ignore the noise of the drivers - and the Tories and Lib Dems look cynically opportunistic for trying to attach themselves to the anti-camera brigade. They plainly haven't examined the six main polls taken on this subject, which show consistently that three-quarters of the public support speed cameras.
Ah, damn lies and statistics again - when the polls were carried out they asked a simple and precise question - "do you support the use of speed cameras to reduce deaths on the road in accident black spots and known dangerous roads?". To which the answer will be a majority of people saying yes.... but phrase the question more accurately like:
Q: Do you agree with illegally place and dangerous speeed camers?
Q: Do you believe it is correct that 3 million motorists will be fined for speeding in 2004?
Q: Have you seen a speed camera outside a school?
blah blah.... its all in the question...
The Gruaniad said:
That's just as well, for this highly efficient policing is about to be greatly expanded. Following pilot trials, a new generation of digital cameras can catch 3,000 car number plates an hour, automatically checking them against police computers, ready to despatch nearby police cars after millions of unlicensed, uninsured or disqualified drivers, as well as stolen cars and suspected criminals. In the pilots it has lead to a tenfold increase in arrests, with large amounts of stolen property recovered and car crime cut sharply.
Right, I have been here before and the story is a good one, but the practicality is totally different. Yes, the technology exists to allow the mass-identification of cars by ANPR. But as I have said MANY times before the system just doesnt work yet - Up to 2 months to have an accurate DVLA record. The percentage of incorrect or illegally registered cars is amazing (I cant say what they think it is.... secrets and all of that!), and there exists NO computer system today that can check the DVLA records, PNC and the insurance database at the same time - unless MI6 / MI5 have it - but sure as hell the Police dont.... and to be honest they dont want it yet - they couldnt cope with the load it would create....
Technology sounds good - but in this case it doesnt work and what she is talking about doesnt exist... I know I am afraid....and it aint coming for at least 2 - 3 years.... there are more pressing issues to deal with first...
Well glad to see objective and reasonable reporting from our national press again. Puppet of the government? No surely not. Self-opinionated moron who cares little for the facts? No surely not. Attempting to justify the theft of £180M in speeding fines for 2004? No surely not.....
What ever did happen to investigative journalism? I think it died some time ago.....
Just sent them a letter, doubt it will get published but at least I tried. It is actually quite sad that the Guardian has been hyjacked by the lentil munching andti car zealots. The Manchester Guardian was founded after the Peterloo disaster in the form of a trust to protect the rights of the population to freedom of speech. While its voice remains independant from the influence of ownership unlike the Murdoch and Black press it does seem to have lost its way. Fast becoming the voice of the extreem luny. One good thing though. The editor is openly republican and has not been prosecuted for treason. 
motorbiker said:
The irrefutable proven facts are these: higher speeds mean more crashes and more deaths.
Proven when, pray tell?
motorbiker said:
A pedestrian struck by a car going 20mph has a 90% chance of survival. At 30mph, that chance of surviving drops to 50%, and at every mph over that it drops very rapidly, reaching just a 10% life chance at 40mph.
Oh, that's the proof? A watertight argument; if you consider all drivers to be in a trance of some kind, or are unaware of car brakes.
motorbiker said:
Does catching people make them drive slower in future? Certainly.
Anyone care to comment? Perhaps Motorbiker would care to explain the number of bans under totting up if these things really work? Makes even less sense when you consider that these convictions become 'spent', and you can do it all again! And further still; bearing in mind the number of drivers now fined, how come anyone is still speeding? Or crashing for that matter?
motorbiker said:
Widely quoted factoids from the drivers' lobbies include some straight untruths. The RAC claims those caught by cameras are middle-aged male company car drivers doing high mileage, whereas young drivers cause most accidents. The figures show it is these same middle-aged company car men who are also 50% more likely to be involved in accidents than others, even after their longer road hours are discounted.
That explains why insurance is cheaper when you're young! Oh, hang on, it ain't. Good thing we've got Motorbiker here to correct the insurance industry!
motorbiker said:
Overconfident men cause crashes, old and young, of all car-owning classes.
The guilt is killing me, though I don't remember any of these accidents myself, amongst anyone I know.
motorbiker said:
Another fox to be shot is the claim that cameras are a big tax revenue spinner. Local police and councils only keep enough to cover the cost of the cameras, the Treasury only gets a small surplus; £73m came in from camera fines last year and there was only a measly £7m for the Treasury.
I love this lentilist gem above all others. Only £73 million. Only £180 million next year...
Can't do sweet FA with that.
M'lud, I rest my case (but not, I must clarify, for want of further evidence).
>> Edited by _Al_ on Thursday 15th January 01:15
A quick read around their site reveals the guardian had a fine day yesterday.
They have recieved the following letter from me;
It's a bit wet, but I'm absolutely exhausted, and I don't really care if I've made an imbecile out of myself with my mental arythmatic (I also forgot to spell check it).
Duh.
They have recieved the following letter from me;
me said:
Ms Bell,
I am writing concerning two articles on the Guardian website yesterday. To be honest, I was disapointed by their content. The first article is, "The Fast and the Furious", by Paul Kelso; the second "The Roadhog Cannot Deny it; Speed Cameras Work" by Polly Toynbee.
Several of the claims in these articles were highly suspect - for example the claim by Mr Kelso that speeding kills 10 people per day on the roads (a total of 3,650 per year). According to Polly Toynbee (on the same site, on the same day), there are 3,600 road deaths a year.
Government figures claim that one third of road deaths are caused by speeding, yet according to these figures over 100% of road deaths are caused by speed. This is a little strange, but mistakes happen, so we may overlook it as a simple case of someone being a bit careless.
However; in her article Ms Toynbee went as far as to claim that every member of the population stands a 1 in 200 chance of 'dying horribly and brutally on the roads'. My mental arythmatic is quite poor these days, but if true I believe that equates to some 300,000 deaths a year caused by car accidents.
In my opinion this makes a mockery of Ms Toynbee; as her article seems to delight in refuting claims by the motoring lobby in favour of "The Truth". By comparison to her 'data', ABD claims of increased accidents at speed camera sites seem utterly believable.
I personally don't take sides in the 'great speed camera debate'. I've never been fined and don't drive in a fashion that leaves me likely to be. My main concern is that by allowing such articles to be printed the Guardian lets down its readers, I certainly won't be reading much into the works of Ms Toynbee from now on. Mr Kelso may also need to take a bit more care in his claims, for fear of a similar loss of face.
Please pass my best wishes to each of them; and my sincere hope that they will try a little harder in future.
Kind Regards,
_Al_
It's a bit wet, but I'm absolutely exhausted, and I don't really care if I've made an imbecile out of myself with my mental arythmatic (I also forgot to spell check it).
Duh.
Generally lentalist drivel as stated, but the 1 in 200 statistic is actually reasonably accurate, especially in comparison to the other rubbish.
There's no time limit set on it, although it's used as the average reader assumes they mean per year.
What the stat means is that everyone's going to die and when you do, there is a 1 in 200 chance that it will be related to a motoring accident.
In England and Wales in 2002, there were 533,527 deaths (www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/mot1203.pdf). If 1 in 200 of those were related to motoring accidents, then 533,527/200 = 2667 - if anything less than the actual number of road deaths (although these stats are for England and Wales only and don't include Scotland which would be included in the road deaths stats).
However, you can look at it another way: this chance of becoming a road death statistic is 0.5%. 3% of people die from "accidental or violent causes" (same link as above).
According to www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/Dh2_29/DH2No29.pdf, there's a 2.7% chance of your death being classified as caused by "Mental and behavioural disorders", or over a 1% chance of "Diabetes mellitus" being the cause of death.
As always, it's lies, damn lies and statistics.
The statistic that can always be used in these situations however, is that even by the governments own massaged statistics, they do absolutely nothing to prevent two thirds of accidents.
So, throwing their own stats back in there faces, that makes dying as a result of speeding a 1 in 600 chance. However, dying as a result of other road collisions not being addressed by the current road safety campaign 1 in 300.
There's no time limit set on it, although it's used as the average reader assumes they mean per year.
What the stat means is that everyone's going to die and when you do, there is a 1 in 200 chance that it will be related to a motoring accident.
In England and Wales in 2002, there were 533,527 deaths (www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/mot1203.pdf). If 1 in 200 of those were related to motoring accidents, then 533,527/200 = 2667 - if anything less than the actual number of road deaths (although these stats are for England and Wales only and don't include Scotland which would be included in the road deaths stats).
However, you can look at it another way: this chance of becoming a road death statistic is 0.5%. 3% of people die from "accidental or violent causes" (same link as above).
According to www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_health/Dh2_29/DH2No29.pdf, there's a 2.7% chance of your death being classified as caused by "Mental and behavioural disorders", or over a 1% chance of "Diabetes mellitus" being the cause of death.
As always, it's lies, damn lies and statistics.
The statistic that can always be used in these situations however, is that even by the governments own massaged statistics, they do absolutely nothing to prevent two thirds of accidents.
So, throwing their own stats back in there faces, that makes dying as a result of speeding a 1 in 600 chance. However, dying as a result of other road collisions not being addressed by the current road safety campaign 1 in 300.
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