speed cameras: more ammunition
Discussion
There are some 6,000 speed cameras in the UK.
If each one saved one life a year, that would be 6,000 lives
saved, and every one would be happy.
In fact, about 3,500 folks die per year on UK roads, so 6,000 lives
aren't being saved.
If each camera saved 0.1 of a life then 600 lives would be saved annually. I don't think this is happening either.
If each camera saved 0.01 of a life, then 60 lives would be saved.
Now that sounds much more realistic.
Trouble is, 100 cameras to save one life doesn't sound very economic
to me. There must be better ways of saving life.
Time to get in touch with safespeed ?
Using your figures; 6,000 Speed cams + 3,500 Mobile Scammers = 3,500 deaths per annum.
It's obvious that without all the Scameras there would be (at least) 13,000 road deaths per annum, as they would not be saving lives.
I really don't know how we managed in the BC (Before Cameras) years, I think we should be grateful.......
The last official report (June 2004) claimed that cameras were saving 100 lives each year at camera sites. With 6,000 cameras that meant that a camera saved a life once in 60 years.
But the June 2004 report didn't allow for regression to the mean error. I estimate regression to the mean error to be larger than the entire benefit claimed. So far from saving 100 lives at speed camera sites we were probably losing 15 extra lives at camera sites.
But that doesn't account for the lives lost through speed camera side effects and bad policy generally. We know that cameras have replaced police patrols and that drink drive deaths are on the increase. More deaths. we know that the Police public relationship is being damaged by cameras. Less confidence in the Police means more deaths. We know that drivers are paying too much attention to speed limits and cameras instead of the road ahed. More deaths. And we know that real life saving policies have been replaced by 'speed kills' garbage policies. More deaths.
All in all if the previous long term trend had continued British annual road deaths would be down around 2,000 a year by now, not 3,200 and very likely rising this year. Over 8,000 people are dead on our roads to date who would still be alive if the 1950 to 1994 trend in the fatal accident rate had continued.
Road safety policy is very badly wrong and it's killing us at the rate of 1,200 or so per year - I am 100% certain of it.
TRL629 investigated why road deaths stopped falling and concluded "because drivers are getting worse". No shit Sherlock - do you think that might be because we're putting out the wrong information and the wrong safety priorities?
>> Edited by safespeed on Tuesday 22 November 16:05
But the June 2004 report didn't allow for regression to the mean error. I estimate regression to the mean error to be larger than the entire benefit claimed. So far from saving 100 lives at speed camera sites we were probably losing 15 extra lives at camera sites.
But that doesn't account for the lives lost through speed camera side effects and bad policy generally. We know that cameras have replaced police patrols and that drink drive deaths are on the increase. More deaths. we know that the Police public relationship is being damaged by cameras. Less confidence in the Police means more deaths. We know that drivers are paying too much attention to speed limits and cameras instead of the road ahed. More deaths. And we know that real life saving policies have been replaced by 'speed kills' garbage policies. More deaths.
All in all if the previous long term trend had continued British annual road deaths would be down around 2,000 a year by now, not 3,200 and very likely rising this year. Over 8,000 people are dead on our roads to date who would still be alive if the 1950 to 1994 trend in the fatal accident rate had continued.
Road safety policy is very badly wrong and it's killing us at the rate of 1,200 or so per year - I am 100% certain of it.
TRL629 investigated why road deaths stopped falling and concluded "because drivers are getting worse". No shit Sherlock - do you think that might be because we're putting out the wrong information and the wrong safety priorities?
>> Edited by safespeed on Tuesday 22 November 16:05
safespeed said:
But the June 2004 report didn't allow for regression to the mean error. I estimate regression to the mean error to be larger than the entire benefit claimed.
Linda Mountain would certainly agree with you (she reckons KSI reduction is more like 11% as opposed to the claimed 40%). However, even her work didn't account for safety features added near camera sites (the defined coverage of which was substantially increased), so the 11% is still too optimistic.
Of course there are other factors, such as addressing driver attitude and education, which would almost certainly save those lives 'saved at camera sites' anyway.
safespeed said:
All in all if the previous long term trend had continued British annual road deaths would be down around 2,000 a year by now, not 3,200 and very likely rising this year. Over 8,000 people are dead on our roads to date who would still be alive if the 1950 to 1994 trend in the fatal accident rate had continued.
Hi safespeed.
Do you really think we could ever get the road death figures down to 2000 per annum? There has to be a plateau (that we could have already reached) due to laws of dimishing returns. Isn't that why we are seeing the figures levelling off?
Even if all the cameras were removed and traf pol restored I still can't see the figures reducing too drastically, although it would be interesting to experiment with us as guinea pigs just like Labour have done
. I think the only way to make serious reductions would be to go back to the days of the man with the red flag but then how many would die from slow ambulances?
cliffe_mafia said:
All in all if the previous long term trend had continued British annual road deaths would be down around 2,000 a year by now, not 3,200 and very likely rising this year. Over 8,000 people are dead on our roads to date who would still be alive if the 1950 to 1994 trend in the fatal accident rate had continued.
Hi safespeed.
Do you really think we could ever get the road death figures down to 2000 per annum? There has to be a plateau (that we could have already reached) due to laws of dimishing returns. Isn't that why we are seeing the figures levelling off?
Even if all the cameras were removed and traf pol restored I still can't see the figures reducing too drastically, although it would be interesting to experiment with us as guinea pigs just like Labour have done
I think the only way to make serious reductions would be to go back to the days of the man with the red flag but then how many would die from slow ambulances?
We're nowhere even remotely close to running out of improvements. We can do oodles to make safer cars. The gains since EuroNCAP have been amazing. We can move traffic away from dangerous village high streets onto motorways and bypasses. Huge gains to be had there. We can treat (genuine!) crash black spots with genuine engineering measures.And every single year we get better at post crash medical care.
But that's before we've looked at road users. Our motorways are 4 times safer than thos in belgium or Austria. (for example.) Why's that then? Do they have different cars? Different speed limits? Different standards of road construction? Different styles of roads policing? Nope. None of the above. We've got better drivers built out of a superior road safety culture.
And our drivers are pretty crap too. Oodles of room for improvement there. We just need to start nudging the system in the right direction. A little bit better each year instead of a little bit worse each year. We've got to feed and develop the safety culture instead of taking it apart brick by brick.
So no. We haven't hit the bump stops. We've just gone completely off the rails.
Paul, yet again I find myself nodding in agreement to your posts. The answer to making a dangerous activity safer is to ensure those who are partaking in that activity are as skilled as possible and yet that is being completely ignored. Can you imagine the yearly carnage if our aviation transport system was managed in a similar way...
I missed this bit...
We would expect to see smaller reductions from year to year in numerical terms. But there's no evidence in the figures to warn us to expect a smaller reduction in percentage terms. See this graph:
Note that the verical scale is a log scale - we'll never reach zero. A constant rate of improvement on a graph like this shows as a straight line.
But note too, that the general trend was improving (i.e. curving downwards) from 1950 until 1994 or so. That's because we were investing more each year.
cliffe_mafia said:
Do you really think we could ever get the road death figures down to 2000 per annum? There has to be a plateau (that we could have already reached) due to laws of dimishing returns. Isn't that why we are seeing the figures levelling off?
We would expect to see smaller reductions from year to year in numerical terms. But there's no evidence in the figures to warn us to expect a smaller reduction in percentage terms. See this graph:
Note that the verical scale is a log scale - we'll never reach zero. A constant rate of improvement on a graph like this shows as a straight line.
But note too, that the general trend was improving (i.e. curving downwards) from 1950 until 1994 or so. That's because we were investing more each year.
Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff