RE: Speed cameras don't save lives
Tuesday 24th May 2005
Speed cameras don't save lives
Academic research refutes Gatso-lovers' claims
|
 Gatsos don't save lives |
Speed cameras don't cut deaths according to the latest research. An academic research team in a Government-funded exercise found that the devices don't have much effect on the number of crashes at accident black spots.
Dr Linda Mountain and a team from the University of Liverpool looked at 149 black spots on 30mph roads across the UK, and found that the case for cameras on those roads had been "exaggerated".
"We could not detect a significant change in fatal and serious crashes at camera sites," the study concluded.
The team also looked at the impact of other speed reduction measures, but only humps in the road were found to have a "significant" impact. They cut personal injury accidents by 44 per cent compared to 29 per cent for other engineering schemes, and just 22 per cent for cameras.
Dr Mountain, whose research was funded by a Government body, said, "Speed humps and cushions had a significant impact on fatal and serious accidents but cameras didn't. It was a surprise. I expected to find some reduction."
RAC Foundation campaigns head Sue Nicholson said, "We have become fixated on speed cameras and need to think up more innovative ways of changing driver behaviour. Speed cameras don't do that."
Safe Speed road safety campaign founder Paul Smith said, "Far from saving lives [speed cameras] have displaced genuine life saving road safety policies resulting in considerable loss of life."
The study will be published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention.
Discussion
kevinday said:
Mmmmm. Speed humps and cushions? I wonder if they considered, and included, the extra lives lost through the extra time involved for the emergency services to access locations 'protected' by speed humps and cushions?
Or deaths caused by cars spearing out of control on motorways at high speed because the suspension failed?
'The team also looked at the impact of other speed reduction measures, but only humps in the road were found to have a "significant" impact. They cut personal injury accidents by 44 per cent compared to 29 per cent for other engineering schemes, and just 22 per cent for cameras.'
Personal injury, how about all the extra back problems every time the body is jared going over a bump
Personal injury, how about all the extra back problems every time the body is jared going over a bump
I understand that this survey has gone right to the heart of government and has been quite high profile, and as a result, if they don't act on it, they're morons.
However, I would refute the claim that speed humps save lives. In the primary sense, they slow the cars down, true (though joyriders who pose the biggest threat use them as stunt ramps so they're more dangerous in that respect), but the secondary effects of speed humps are more dangerous:
-They hinder the progress of emergency vehicles. Deaths due to late arrival by fire engines and ambulances has frequently been attributed to traffic jams and damage caused by speed humps.
-They create congestion by artificially simulating a bottle-neck effect.
-They damage cars, leading to the potential for other accidents elsewhere.
-They have the potential to create accidents in wet and icy weather, as their contribution would make the road surface dramatically uneven, and as a result, parts of the road would be dry and grippy, yet at awkward angles and elevations (humps), whilst others would be smooth and wet and prone to causing skids.
-Most severely, there is documented evidence that the effect of an ambulance driving over a speed hump with a patient on board undergoing medical treatment has the potential to cause severe damage to the patient. Just think 'emergency need for scalpel work' and they're positively stupid.
IMO, we just need a policy of simplification, 'leave the roads alone' - limits according to area, limits of 50-plus unaffected by cameras except at flagged-up blind spots, and definately no bloody speed humps.
However, I would refute the claim that speed humps save lives. In the primary sense, they slow the cars down, true (though joyriders who pose the biggest threat use them as stunt ramps so they're more dangerous in that respect), but the secondary effects of speed humps are more dangerous:
-They hinder the progress of emergency vehicles. Deaths due to late arrival by fire engines and ambulances has frequently been attributed to traffic jams and damage caused by speed humps.
-They create congestion by artificially simulating a bottle-neck effect.
-They damage cars, leading to the potential for other accidents elsewhere.
-They have the potential to create accidents in wet and icy weather, as their contribution would make the road surface dramatically uneven, and as a result, parts of the road would be dry and grippy, yet at awkward angles and elevations (humps), whilst others would be smooth and wet and prone to causing skids.
-Most severely, there is documented evidence that the effect of an ambulance driving over a speed hump with a patient on board undergoing medical treatment has the potential to cause severe damage to the patient. Just think 'emergency need for scalpel work' and they're positively stupid.
IMO, we just need a policy of simplification, 'leave the roads alone' - limits according to area, limits of 50-plus unaffected by cameras except at flagged-up blind spots, and definately no bloody speed humps.
kevinday said:
Mmmmm. Speed humps and cushions? I wonder if they considered, and included, the extra lives lost through the extra time involved for the emergency services to access locations 'protected' by speed humps and cushions?
London Ambulance Service attributed 100 extra deaths to delays in emergency crews getting to scenes where urgent medical attention was needed. So it has been quantified....
Strange the reports made from this study when the results went something like this:
1. Cameras are most effective on roads with higher mean speeds
2. Typically a 4% fall in accidents per 1 mph fall in speed
3. 38% fall in slight injury accidents
4. 30% fall in fatal and serious injury accidents
5. Cameras reduce accidents
6. 19% fall in slight and 6% fall in fatal and serious accidents due to impact speed
It also says that the method of arriving at these conclusions allowed for regression to the mean effects and used a technique to reduce these effects in arriving at the figures.
Look at conclusion number 2. It is only 1% lower than what the TRL predicted all those years ago.
I can't find any reference in the report that says cameras don't work as intended. Has Ms. Mountain produced another report that contradicts this one that is still available on the Liverpool Uni website?
The conclusions of this report certainly say nothing like what has been reported.
1. Cameras are most effective on roads with higher mean speeds
2. Typically a 4% fall in accidents per 1 mph fall in speed
3. 38% fall in slight injury accidents
4. 30% fall in fatal and serious injury accidents
5. Cameras reduce accidents
6. 19% fall in slight and 6% fall in fatal and serious accidents due to impact speed
It also says that the method of arriving at these conclusions allowed for regression to the mean effects and used a technique to reduce these effects in arriving at the figures.
Look at conclusion number 2. It is only 1% lower than what the TRL predicted all those years ago.
I can't find any reference in the report that says cameras don't work as intended. Has Ms. Mountain produced another report that contradicts this one that is still available on the Liverpool Uni website?
The conclusions of this report certainly say nothing like what has been reported.
destroyer said:
Strange the reports made from this study when the results went something like this:
1. Cameras are most effective on roads with higher mean speeds
2. Typically a 4% fall in accidents per 1 mph fall in speed
3. 38% fall in slight injury accidents
4. 30% fall in fatal and serious injury accidents
5. Cameras reduce accidents
6. 19% fall in slight and 6% fall in fatal and serious accidents due to impact speed
A hypothetical question for you.
Your face is covered in spots. You take some antibiotics. There is a marginal improvement in your spotty face. Meanwhile the rest of your body erupts in spots.
Would you say the antibiotics were effective?
destroyer said:
Strange the reports made from this study when the results went something like this:
1. Cameras are most effective on roads with higher mean speeds
5. Cameras reduce accidents
1. Even though more accidents happen on slower, more built up roads.
5. A quick surf through stats on numerous SCP sites will throw up plenty of camera locations where the "after" is much worse than the "before", so the statement isn't valid. If cameras do indeed reduce accidents, EVERY camera should reduce them, surely? They either work or they don't.
destroyer said:So if other reports stating that we're all driving slower are to be believed, why has the overall death rate increased? (says a lot for the camera policy if we’re not slowing down). Do you have a link for the original study? I can’t find it.
Strange the reports made from this study when the results went something like this:
1. Cameras are most effective on roads with higher mean speeds
2. Typically a 4% fall in accidents per 1 mph fall in speed
3. 38% fall in slight injury accidents
4. 30% fall in fatal and serious injury accidents
5. Cameras reduce accidents
6. 19% fall in slight and 6% fall in fatal and serious accidents due to impact speed
……………..
Look at conclusion number 2. It is only 1% lower than what the TRL predicted all those years ago.
I can't find any reference in the report that says cameras don't work as intended. Has Ms. Mountain produced another report that contradicts this one that is still available on the Liverpool Uni website?
The conclusions of this report certainly say nothing like what has been reported.
destroyer said:yeah, they called in a mathemagician to make the remainder disappear
It also says that the method of arriving at these conclusions allowed for regression to the mean effects and used a technique to reduce these effects in arriving at the figures.
destructive Steviebabes said:
Strange the reports made from this study when the results went something like this:
1. Cameras are most effective on roads with higher mean speeds
M 6 - at Shap - Liebchen? Dezember was a bit grim - nicht? But you are supposed to be protecting me....
ist not good enough.... I want Ian there und not your camera - Steviebabes. I want to know that if something happened - he would be there to talk me trough it like Brian from further south - all those years ago... und your scamera ist not going to stop the person mit the illness or the tiredness or the dring - und it seems RoSPA have done survey und found too many take this chane as they are ever so careful speedwise for thse scams but not very good mit the reactions... Und I do not want you to give me a carnation... und I was the one who stamped it into the ground that day too.... you are lucky the person who handed me that did not end up mit the carnation sticking out of the backside too.
destructive Steviebabes said:
2. Typically a 4% fall in accidents per 1 mph fall in speed
You are still not talking to Ernest on Paulie's site Liebchen.... Mad Doc has just asked me to remind you about Ings und those three accidents ..... which were not speed ones per the local paper und per the locals. Chap in garage tells me the chap had heart attack at wheel - und I know only too well it happens - Liebchen.
Und you have not proved they work - are we not showing increase - 59 in 2004 v 53 in 2003? Und you post this on own site... Liebchen. Ist not me saying this - but you.
Which ist making it just a little silly for fooowing bits:
destructive Steviebabes said:
3. 38% fall in slight injury accidents
4. 30% fall in fatal and serious injury accidents
und
destructive Steviebabes said:
5. Cameras reduce accidents
Und your proof on this? A RISE in our area?
Und increases all over the blinkin' place....
Und you have not one shred of proof as research ist not uniform nor remotely standard in way ist collated.
Und Liebchen - I know what i talk of... ist my collation of scientific trials on drugs und my tweeking of them und modifying und designing of them - which actually forms the basis of the opinion for the granting of the licences und the ultimate saving of a lot more lives than you are saving...und my work has to be exact - to a prescribed standard which can be measured against a norm or control... und all reserchers who try to do a study are thwarted by wishy washy und haphazard systems which prove zero... so you cannot make this claim. You give no befores und afters und only thing we know ist that road appears to have regressed to a mean - und sticking a scam up at Ings where accidnet did not happen in the enforced stretch und was not down to speed as prime cause und claiming reduction of accident ist silly. Of course ist a reduction as accident which occurred was a freak anyway ... und I know all about freak accidents Liebchen - don't I just....
destructive Steviebabes said:
6. 19% fall in slight and 6% fall in fatal and serious accidents due to impact speed
Und please explain why we have increases -- - ist more than last year. destuctive Steviebabes said:
It also says that the method of arriving at these conclusions allowed for regression to the mean effects and used a technique to reduce these effects in arriving at the figures.
But Dr Mountain has commmented that the results are exxaggertated if the statistical effect ist not accounted for - und her work appears to suggest that this effect ist not being taken into account....und I know ist an effect as I have drugs which appear to give this result ... but then you compare mit the placebo... und you get a different take altogether...
Cannot disclose how we do things und methodology as would take too long und in any case... ist a shhhhhhhhhhhhh! topic...
destructive Steviebabes said:
Look at conclusion number 2. It is only 1% lower than what the TRL predicted all those years ago.
I can't find any reference in the report that says cameras don't work as intended. Has Ms. Mountain produced another report that contradicts this one that is still available on the Liverpool Uni website?
The conclusions of this report certainly say nothing like what has been reported.
Ist typical... BMJ chap makes a report und the pro lobby latch on to the 71% figure... und Pilkington only concluded that the data seems to indicate that scams are successful - but the data ist a little flawed to say the least.
Ist as if you make if say only what you wnat it say Liebchen.
Now I do not want to show off here ... und you know my spelling ist just a little iffy to say the least - but ist still better
than yours anyway. But are you sure you passed an English O Level
? 'King Deadly said:
Strange the reports made from this study when the results went something like this:
1. Cameras are most effective on roads with higher mean speeds
2. Typically a 4% fall in accidents per 1 mph fall in speed
3. 38% fall in slight injury accidents
4. 30% fall in fatal and serious injury accidents
5. Cameras reduce accidents
6. 19% fall in slight and 6% fall in fatal and serious accidents due to impact speed
A hypothetical question for you.
Your face is covered in spots. You take some antibiotics. There is a marginal improvement in your spotty face. Meanwhile the rest of your body erupts in spots.
Would you say the antibiotics were effective?
We once trialled a cream for skin complaint... und it never made past first trial . ...ist long time ago... but all it did was move the rash around... ww traced it to too much of two ingredient....which interacted mit each other. 
Ist the answer - we have too much of toe ingredients like we did in that cream.... 1. Too many scams
und
2. a proliferation of droids called Steviebabes
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