Tories knock over reliance on Scamers

[gopher]

It seems the tories have found something to help gain votes, it seems the views expressed are very similar to those of Paul Smith, it seems someone was listening at their conference then Paul.

www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=117033

[turbobloke]

Tim Yeo said:

fall in interim road accident deaths welcome blah blah criticise the Government's over-reliance on speed cameras to cut the casualty rate

so far so good

Tim Yeo said:

"I welcome the reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads. Nevertheless, casualties from road accidents remain unacceptably high. Labour claim they are getting to grips with the causes of road accidents and fatalities, but concentrating too much on speed instead of the whole range of dangers on our roads has led to an over reliance on speed cameras. The Government should focus on improving driver awareness and tracking down dangerous and reckless drivers, especially those driving without insurance."

Also good up to a point, but what this signals is lip service. He still focuses on drivers but takes a better line through the corner. By failing to recognise the vast majority of problems arise due to the most dangerous group of road users - pedestrians -he signals that the war on the motorist will continue but they'll go non-nuclear on us. He also signally fails to acknowledge that this country's drivers have given us the safest roads in the world, where will he go for lessons on how to improve?

>> Edited by turbobloke on Saturday 6th November 10:38

[safespeed]

gopher said:

It seems the tories have found something to help gain votes, it seems the views expressed are very similar to those of Paul Smith, it seems someone was listening at their conference then Paul. www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=117033

I could be wrong, but I think Tory policy on speed cameras started to change after I sent this email, 18 months ago:


Subject: Speed Cameras
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 02:52:15 +0000
From: Paul Smith <[e-mail]>
Organization: Safe Speed
To: Tim Collins




Hi Tim,

I note with interest your pro motorist policies. Well done. The country has clearly decided that private motoring is the best form of travel for most journeys and motorists everywhere will welcome your support.

But I really want to bring Speed Cameras to your attention. It might seem "obvious" that "slower is safer", or that "speed cameras save lives", but neither claim is supported by fact.

Here are a few facts:

* Our road safety performance improvement is now at the lowest level for over 50 years. This is NOT due to having "had all the easy gains".

* Almost all claims of speed cameras safety benefits are actually due to a statistical glitch known as "regression to the mean".

* The supporting research for speed cameras is largely misguided and ignorant.

* The average driver shows adequate skill and responsibility and does not need the attentions of the law to "make him safe". He could however benefit from skills and especially attitude training.

I run a web site intended to improve road safety and expose the very serious limitations in the present system. I know a great deal about road driving having invested the time, trouble and significant expense to get extensive training. One basic error that is frequently repeated by researchers and politicians is that, like drivers, they think they know "enough" about road driving.

The UK roads are the safest in the world. It isn't by chance. They are the safest for one main reason, and that's because of the very high standards fed down into legislation, advice and best practise by the Police Driving School at Hendon. We've forgotten that roads are only as safe as the skill and responsibility used by drivers. Every time we allow those skills and responsibilities to be eroded the roads get more dangerous. The cameras erode drivers responsibilities and make the roads more dangerous. Many expert road drivers agree.

Making the abolition of speed cameras part of conservative policy could be enough to enable you to win the next election. Whatever the surveys appears to say (and I think they record politically correct opinions not real opinions) people hate speed cameras. The rabid anti-car nuts will vote labour whatever you say.

So PLEASE investigate the issue. There's plenty of information available on my web site, and I'd be delighted to provide any assistance.
=========================================

Tim Collins was Shadow Secretary of State for Transport at the time. I had excellent dialogues with Tim until he got shunted to education in the autumn of 2003. See this for example:



But I'm not having much contact with the current conservative "Transport" team. Perhaps they use my information and so on, but generally they don't respond to my emails. I'll keep at 'em.