Stats on M1 SPECS system - £3,386 in fines A DAY

[brotherharry]

Spending a lot of time pootling up and down the bottom of the M1 recently and turned my idle wonderings into a Freedom of Information request to Highways Agency/Hertfordshire Constabulary.

Herts Constabulary's response was posted on their FOI log page, but here's the stats and implications:

A SPECS average speed system has been in operation on M1 road widening program between J6a and J10 since 29/04/2006.



* In the 65 days up until 03/07/2006 that it has been in operation 3,669 notices of intended prosecution (NIPs) have been issued at a rate of 56 per day.

* The Highways Agency estimate 160,000 vehicles per day travel that section, meaning 0.035% of vehicles are offending.

* If all those NIPs were paid unchallenged and each is worth £60 to the treasury, total revenue collected would be £220,140 from that 65 day period or £3,386.77 per day.

* Over a year (assuming the same rate of offences were to continue) £1,236,170.77 in fines would be collected.

* The project is scheduled to run from 01/03/2006 to 31/12/2008 which equates to 1,036 days. If the rate of NIPs were to remain constant then they could expect 58,478 offences recorded, with corresponding revenue of £3,508,692.92 over the life of the project. Given the history of government run projects it may well run longer.

* The section of road is 17km long, equating to revenue of £72,715.93 per km per year.

* Highways Agency has 7,754km under management meaning if they put the whole network under SPECS enforcement and similar levels of offences were recorded, that would equate to revenue of £563,839,302.62 per year.

According to Highways Agency:
* Roadworkers killed between 2000 and 2002 in roadworks : 11.
* People (non-specific, guess it includes drivers and not just road workers) injured during roadworks in 2000 : 1,500
* According to Balfour Beatty Skanska JV (the joint venture charged with delivering the project) there are 200 people working on the project (although not all in the traffic management area)

[percy flage]

Further question: How many of those roadworkers died as a result of traffic from the M-way and how many as a result of the hazards of the job - i.e. being mown down by heavy machinery?

[signia]

Is it just me or does anyone else find it depressing that a video camera can earn more than I do in a day....?

Quite suprised at the low offence rate though...

[brotherharry]

I was surprised by number of offences as well given the number of times I see people caning past me at 'normal' speeds. I suspect this means that most people's speedos are significantly underreporting speeds or people are only on for one junction and leave before they pass the next camera.

Great question Percy. Probably related to the level of health and safety training provided to workers too...

[baSkey]

very interesting facts!

__________________
i think the message is getting through because there aren't as many (non-Polish registered) cars hooning along..!

the thing i feel uneasy about is that there is no camera to enforce the last bit of 40 before the derestricted. so you either have to go quicker than 40 (which is sort of ok cos there are no cameras (!)) to get ahead of the people who then stay in lane 3 at 65 OR you have to let them go past you in the 40 sit behind them until newport pagnell..!

Edited by baSkey on Friday 11th August 09:11

[safespeed]

And the best reason of all to get seriously angry about this is that the Highways Agencies own BEST SCIENCE says that these cameras actually INCREASE INJURY CRASHES.

see: www.safespeed.org.uk/trl595.html

Folks, while I'm here - unusually - posting in General Gassing, may I please highlight the huge amount of work that I'm doing on a shoe string budget and beg for some more financial support?

See www.safespeed.org.uk/join.html for memberships and donations.

See www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=16 for a partial log of recent media work

We're up against MASSIVE resources, but making real progress - but much much more needs to be done. Ideally I'd appoint a fundraising officer to beg money from business, but I've never found the right individual. The Safe Speed campaign could pay substantial commissions on funds raised.

Best regards,
Paul Smith,
Safe Speed Campaign
www.safespeed.org.uk
[e-mail]

[fieldl]

Equally worrying is the question posted to them about the number of serving police office who have a criminal record or have been cautioned. They cannot comment on the number of cautioned officers as they would need to check for every individual officer. However they have 6 officers who now have criminal records since joining the force. All 6 were convicted for drink driving offences

[ph123]

Thanks for these stats. I commute daily right through these works and can sense the tempo increasing because I'd not heard about fine rate.
I do now!

[Polarbert]

And, if you travelled down the inside lane at 100mph, you wouldn't get a ticket, as there is no camera dedicated to that lane.

[g_attrill]

percy flage said:

Further question: How many of those roadworkers died as a result of traffic from the M-way and how many as a result of the hazards of the job - i.e. being mown down by heavy machinery?

IIRC the statistics include roadworkers injured/killed by road vehicles involved in the construction (eg. being reversed into by a tipper truck) but not other accidents, eg. crushed by material emptied from a tipper truck.

[vonhosen]

How many roadworkers have been killed if any in that section whilst covered by SPECS ?
How many members of the public if any have been killed & what was the cause of any collision ?

I think 56 offenders a day out of 160,000 is a very low offender rate.

Edited by vonhosen on Saturday 12th August 17:09

[jasandjules]

The question really is

How many roadworkers were killed by passing traffic?

i.e. eliminate those killed by the company and the general hazards...I suspect the answer to be very low indeed. Certainly not enough to justify the specs by roadworks.

[BliarOut]

brotherharry said:

* The project is scheduled to run from 01/03/2006 to 31/12/2008 which equates to 1,036 days. If the rate of NIPs were to remain constant then they could expect 58,478 offences recorded, with corresponding revenue of £3,508,692.92 over the life of the project. Given the history of government run projects it may well run longer.

Any idea of the project costs?

[NDT]

safespeed said:

And the best reason of all to get seriously angry about this is that the Highways Agencies own BEST SCIENCE says that these cameras actually INCREASE INJURY CRASHES.

are you seriously suggesting that the use of an average speed system thru roadworks increases crashes?
fixed cameras I could understand, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree with that point.

[brotherharry]

Anyone have a GPS thingy with a speedo on it?
Be interesting to know how close your GPS speed is to your car's speedo speed.
Might explain low offence rates if everyone is trying to stick to what the car thinks is 40mph ,but true speed is lower...

[flemke]

NDT said:

safespeed said:

And the best reason of all to get seriously angry about this is that the Highways Agencies own BEST SCIENCE says that these cameras actually INCREASE INJURY CRASHES.

are you seriously suggesting that the use of an average speed system thru roadworks increases crashes?
fixed cameras I could understand, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree with that point.

I wouldn't know that it would increase the frequency of crashes, but certainly it could do.

When you go past an individual camera, you focus a disproportionate amount of your attention on your speedo, but only for a few seconds as you pass the camera.
Alternatively, when you know that your average speed will be monitored, and you have no idea what average speed will trip the cameras, nor do you know by exactly how much your speedo over-reads, or what is the actual speed of the cars around you with which you are simply trying to flow along harmlessly, you focus a dispropoprtionate amount of your attention on your speedo for a quite lengthy period. In the case of the M1 roadworks, that will be several minutes.

It cannot be good for road safety when every driver is obsessed with monitoring his/her speedo rather than concentrating on the actual hazards in the driving environment.

[vonhosen]

brotherharry said:

Anyone have a GPS thingy with a speedo on it?
Be interesting to know how close your GPS speed is to your car's speedo speed.
Might explain low offence rates if everyone is trying to stick to what the car thinks is 40mph ,but true speed is lower...

Most speedos display a higher speed than true road speed.

[eyebeebe]

brotherharry said:

Anyone have a GPS thingy with a speedo on it?
Be interesting to know how close your GPS speed is to your car's speedo speed.
Might explain low offence rates if everyone is trying to stick to what the car thinks is 40mph ,but true speed is lower...

Depends on the car. My O/H's MX-5 indicates 36 when GPS shows 32. (I only kow that speed as I went past a scamera van at 36 keeping up with the flow of traffic and was a little concerned, but knew it read a high). My S2000 indicates approximately the right speed (up to 70 mph m'lud).

I used a Snooper Indago for the GPs readings and I've got to say it's SPECS detection mode is great: It beeps intermittently when in a SPECS zone to remind you, and has a fit if your average speed so far has been higher than the posted limit

[baSkey]

brotherharry said:

Anyone have a GPS thingy with a speedo on it?
Be interesting to know how close your GPS speed is to your car's speedo speed.
Might explain low offence rates if everyone is trying to stick to what the car thinks is 40mph ,but true speed is lower...

no. but the brother in-law-to-be and myself tried the father-in-law-to-be's and, the digital speedo on the MINI 'over-read' but only by 1 mph at those sort of speeds. so unless there is some funny business going on with a tomtom go so, it too is designed to show a speed greater than the actual speed (so that you are always within the limit..?) then, my car at least seems to have an acurate speedo. by 60mph i think it was reading 62.

Edited by baSkey on Monday 14th August 08:34

[baSkey]

again on saturday night i was amazed by howmany people were going quickly/ tailgating the poor s0d in the zafira in lane 2 just in front of me!

there were a couple of people who went past in the 40 doing a kind of "well where did it get you driving at 94 leptons on an emptyish road, look see i have caught you up!" look. But they must have been doing at least 50 through the 40 to have caught me up again so it' be interesting to know the threshold on the SPECS (if only!).