Today's Telegraph
Discussion
porsche944 said:
Interesting little article...
From today's Telegraph
I detect some spin here. I see nothing in that article to indicate that these 'guidelines' have any more credibility than the ones the DfT announced in Dec. 2001, which we now know to be a crock of s*it.
same stuff coming from OZ
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Alan Buckingham presented his controversial findings here in Oz last month that speed cameras dont save lives.
Summary here:
www.cis.org.au/policy/spr03/polspr03-1.htm
Full paper here:-
www.cis.org.au/policy/spr03/polspr03-1.pdf
extract...
. . . While some countries have recently increased speed limits on major roads (for example, Italy and some States in the US), in Britain and Australia there is strong pressure to reduce speeds and catch speeders. The British government has said that it wants to make speeding as socially unacceptable as drink driving yet, unlike the risks associated with drink driving, the data are not there to support the claim that speeding causes accidents.
It is true that the faster the impact speed the greater the risk of injury or death, but it does not follow that speeding leads to more accidents. Nevertheless, millions of mainly law-abiding people are being convicted each year. Moreover, to the extent that the risk of a serious accident has come down over the last 40 years, it is due to careful road engineering, sensible law enforcement, medical advances and massive advances in car safety, not speed cameras.
As the failure of the 'speed kills' policy becomes clear, the reaction of the government and police is not to review the obsession with speeding but to think of more ways of catching more speeders and imposing tougher penalties. Large sums of money are being spent on new, high technology equipment that photographs drivers as well as the car number plate. The British government is currently investigating GPS technology which offers the ability to control electronically the maximum speed of a vehicle according to the prevailing speed limit.The issue of speeding highlights the familiar story of failed state intervention. . .
"
"
Alan Buckingham presented his controversial findings here in Oz last month that speed cameras dont save lives.
Summary here:
www.cis.org.au/policy/spr03/polspr03-1.htm
Full paper here:-
www.cis.org.au/policy/spr03/polspr03-1.pdf
extract...
. . . While some countries have recently increased speed limits on major roads (for example, Italy and some States in the US), in Britain and Australia there is strong pressure to reduce speeds and catch speeders. The British government has said that it wants to make speeding as socially unacceptable as drink driving yet, unlike the risks associated with drink driving, the data are not there to support the claim that speeding causes accidents.
It is true that the faster the impact speed the greater the risk of injury or death, but it does not follow that speeding leads to more accidents. Nevertheless, millions of mainly law-abiding people are being convicted each year. Moreover, to the extent that the risk of a serious accident has come down over the last 40 years, it is due to careful road engineering, sensible law enforcement, medical advances and massive advances in car safety, not speed cameras.
As the failure of the 'speed kills' policy becomes clear, the reaction of the government and police is not to review the obsession with speeding but to think of more ways of catching more speeders and imposing tougher penalties. Large sums of money are being spent on new, high technology equipment that photographs drivers as well as the car number plate. The British government is currently investigating GPS technology which offers the ability to control electronically the maximum speed of a vehicle according to the prevailing speed limit.The issue of speeding highlights the familiar story of failed state intervention. . .
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stooz said:I believe that more positive benefits to safety would result if poor-quality driving were to be made socially unacceptable, but such offecnces would not lend themselves to 'automatic detection & conviction' as speeding does by the use of scameras. Too often one hears about some dithering driver who starts their car whilst still in gear and shunts several other cars as a result - this sort of occurance is usually treated with humour rather than horror at the ineptitude of the driver concerned...unless they mow doen some unfortunate bystander.
...Moreover, to the extent that the risk of a serious accident has come down over the last 40 years, it is due to careful road engineering, sensible law enforcement, medical advances and massive advances in car safety
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