RE: More Cash for Road Safety
Wednesday 3rd March 2004
More Cash for Road Safety
Yes, a whole £216,000. Guess how much they collect in road tax each year...
Seventeen road safety schemes are set to receive a share of a Government fund, Road Safety Minister David Jamieson announced today.
The majority of the winning projects focus on various aspects of child road safety, but other subjects covered included Occupational Road Safety and Speeding.
However the amounts involved can only bring into question how serious the Government its ten year plan to reduce casualties on our roads.
The ‘Road Safety Challenge Fund’ run by the Department for Transport will provide just £216,000 for 17 projects which aim to improve road safety in Great Britain. This is an increase in funding over last year's scheme which provided some £185,000 in road safety grants. In contrast, in 2000-1, the DVLA collected £5.2 billion in road tax.
David Jamieson gave the Government a pat on the back as he dished out the grants."We are successfully working towards meeting the challenging targets to reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roads. "
He backed this up with:
"Most recent figures suggest that in 2003 total deaths and serious injuries were down 20% compared to those in the 1994-98 baseline period."
Stats: Department for Transport
If the Government are going to achieve their goal of a reduction in road casualties of 40% by 2008 then they'd better put their consider putting a bit more effort into it. Less talk and more action perhaps...?
Discussion
Derisory isn't a strong enough word 
Mondeoman, you haven't quite grasped it. The scameraships can claw back (hypothesize) the amount of money they have spent in the persuit of motorists.
This can include: new buildings to house themselves in, office supplies, hospitality, sending mailshots to MPs telling them what they've been doing, vans etc etc.
It does not include actually fixing the roads to make them safer
Mondeoman, you haven't quite grasped it. The scameraships can claw back (hypothesize) the amount of money they have spent in the persuit of motorists.
This can include: new buildings to house themselves in, office supplies, hospitality, sending mailshots to MPs telling them what they've been doing, vans etc etc.
It does not include actually fixing the roads to make them safer
Absolutely pathetic.
I say we start a NATIONWIDE campaign to bring back the Green Cross Code man.
I'm fed up of having to be responsible for dickheads that run into the road!
It's like telling train drivers to do 5mph in case someone leaps out onto the track!
DON'T GO ON THE ROADS!!!! YOU WILL DIE!
I say we start a NATIONWIDE campaign to bring back the Green Cross Code man.
I'm fed up of having to be responsible for dickheads that run into the road!
It's like telling train drivers to do 5mph in case someone leaps out onto the track!
DON'T GO ON THE ROADS!!!! YOU WILL DIE!
mondeoman said:
What about all the money they raise from Scameras? I thought that was supposed to be ploughed back into "Road Safety" - and thats a helluva lot more than this paltry figure - Essex alone "contributed" more than 4 times that amount to the Exchequer.
Same tired old b@@sh*t.
The money is FIRST used to get the scamera tw@ts a comfy office with HUGE expenses including HUGE entertaining bills, then buy all the control-freakish cameras and talivans, then pay their scum, and the twopence left gets given to the Exchecquer......
Typical LAbour Quangos....fire the ferkin lot of them and destroy all cameras and control freak machinery.
FREE LIMITS FOR FREE CITIZENS!!!
JMGS4 said:Try the other side of the bed tomorrow
The money is FIRST used to get the scamera tw@ts a comfy office with HUGE expenses including HUGE entertaining bills, then buy all the control-freakish cameras and talivans, then pay their scum, and the twopence left gets given to the Exchecquer......
Typical LAbour Quangos....fire the ferkin lot of them and destroy all cameras and control freak machinery.
FREE LIMITS FOR FREE CITIZENS!!!
JMGS4 said:
What about all the money they raise from Scameras? I thought that was supposed to be ploughed back into "Road Safety" - and thats a helluva lot more than this paltry figure - Essex alone "contributed" more than 4 times that amount to the Exchequer.
Same tired old b@@sh*t.
The money is FIRST used to get the scamera tw@ts a comfy office with HUGE expenses including HUGE entertaining bills, then buy all the control-freakish cameras and talivans, then pay their scum, and the twopence left gets given to the Exchecquer......
Typical LAbour Quangos....fire the ferkin lot of them and destroy all cameras and control freak machinery.
FREE LIMITS FOR FREE CITIZENS!!!
Right, except for one thing. We're not citizens. We're subjects of the Queen (and the way things look at present, she's delegated that totally to Tony). Therefore we're not free.
mondeoman said:
What about all the money they raise from Scameras? I thought that was supposed to be ploughed back into "Road Safety" - and thats a helluva lot more than this paltry figure - Essex alone "contributed" more than 4 times that amount to the Exchequer.
Same tired old b@@sh*t.
I was trying to find any publicity on this story on the Times or BBC websites. I failed, but found this story about Michael Howard being rubbished over his views of speed cameras:
www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-1015818,00.html
Towards the end of the article, "a spokeswoman for the Partnerships" says, "...Police keep a proportion of the fines, but must spend it on speed enforcement".
So it's not road safety, but speed enforcement. Hence there is so little money for road safety.
But perhaps this is a good thing, because while we would understand road safety as meaning reengineering to make a road safer at the existing speed limit, "they" mean the introduction of humps, chicanes, cycle tracks and width limiters coupled with lower limits. Then they can introduce another camera to pay for more junkets to celebrate the success of the camera in reducing speeds....
Of course it is about speed enforcement and not safety.
They do not make any money out of making the roads SAFE! They can only raise revenue by fining people and then fraudulently claiming it is in the name of "road safety".
Politico speech = pretzel talk! (ie half baked!)
And cacatous - suspect the reason why they prefer cartoon hedgehogs (who cannot sing - and I have yet to meet anyone(adult, child, Brit or foreign) who can hum the song or sing along to it) is because Hattie the Hedgehog (whatever) probably comes cheaper than the Green Cross Man.
They do not make any money out of making the roads SAFE! They can only raise revenue by fining people and then fraudulently claiming it is in the name of "road safety".
Politico speech = pretzel talk! (ie half baked!)
And cacatous - suspect the reason why they prefer cartoon hedgehogs (who cannot sing - and I have yet to meet anyone(adult, child, Brit or foreign) who can hum the song or sing along to it) is because Hattie the Hedgehog (whatever) probably comes cheaper than the Green Cross Man.
Peter Ward said:Actually, the word that sprang to my mind was "usurped" (i.e. by B'lair). What did I saw elsewhere about an elected dictatorship? - Streaky
[ ... ]
Right, except for one thing. We're not citizens. We're subjects of the Queen (and the way things look at present, she's delegated that totally to Tony).
Looking at the DfT report, I noticed a couple of things:
1) They don't make it easy to determine percentage change per billion km
2) The percentage change across various types of road between 2001 and 2002 is "interesting" (table 5):
- on built-up roads, the change is -3% (no change in volume)
- on major roads, the change is -3% (+2% increase in volume)
- on minor roads (B, C and unclassified), the change is -3% (+4% in volume)
...therefore, the category of road with the best safety improvement is minor roads. This is even more marked when you just consider the number killed.
And precisely which roads are NOT monitored by all the scameras? Exactly.
1) They don't make it easy to determine percentage change per billion km
2) The percentage change across various types of road between 2001 and 2002 is "interesting" (table 5):
- on built-up roads, the change is -3% (no change in volume)
- on major roads, the change is -3% (+2% increase in volume)
- on minor roads (B, C and unclassified), the change is -3% (+4% in volume)
...therefore, the category of road with the best safety improvement is minor roads. This is even more marked when you just consider the number killed.
And precisely which roads are NOT monitored by all the scameras? Exactly.
britten_mark said:
Those stats could just indicate how the inherant safety of the average family car is slowly improved, for passengrs and pedestrians.
spot on. im amazed how the car industry never gets credit for this. the nations 'fleet' of cars is much safer today. (medical care is probably better too)
In a scientific study, you need to hold all variables constant other than the one you are interested in. Then you can determine whether the actions you take have any effect.
If you can't do that, or have no control over the variables because you're studying real life, then all you can do is give indications of correlation, never cause and effect. This is true even of things like smoking and lung cancer -- there is just a correlation. And there is definitely no proof of salt causing anything, but that's another story.
Because of the huge variety of things that are all acting at the same time, scientists look for a 2:1 -- or even 3:1 -- change in the variable being studied before they're prepared to admit there's a correlation (so ignore the junk science that talks about 14% increase in illness from passive smoking -- that's just noise level).*
So have we had a halving, or better, of KSIs since speed cameras were introduced? No. Even at camera sites they're only claiming "up to 35%". That's not half, and certainly not a third.
And of course this totally ignores road reengineering, improvements in car safety both passive and active, the effects of changing traffic density on driver behaviour, the weather, and even random fluctuations in the numbers of accidents. They just assume everything is constant apart from the implementation of their beloved speed cameras.
The sad thing is few notice and even fewer care. Journalists have no statistical training so just publish the press releases. Readers are no different. We now live in the post-scientific age. If it feels true, then that's ok, and "speed kills" feels true, doesn't it?
*see www.numberwatch.co.uk for details -- great site.
Edit: got the Number Watch URL wrong, sorry.
>> Edited by Peter Ward on Thursday 4th March 10:09
If you can't do that, or have no control over the variables because you're studying real life, then all you can do is give indications of correlation, never cause and effect. This is true even of things like smoking and lung cancer -- there is just a correlation. And there is definitely no proof of salt causing anything, but that's another story.
Because of the huge variety of things that are all acting at the same time, scientists look for a 2:1 -- or even 3:1 -- change in the variable being studied before they're prepared to admit there's a correlation (so ignore the junk science that talks about 14% increase in illness from passive smoking -- that's just noise level).*
So have we had a halving, or better, of KSIs since speed cameras were introduced? No. Even at camera sites they're only claiming "up to 35%". That's not half, and certainly not a third.
And of course this totally ignores road reengineering, improvements in car safety both passive and active, the effects of changing traffic density on driver behaviour, the weather, and even random fluctuations in the numbers of accidents. They just assume everything is constant apart from the implementation of their beloved speed cameras.
The sad thing is few notice and even fewer care. Journalists have no statistical training so just publish the press releases. Readers are no different. We now live in the post-scientific age. If it feels true, then that's ok, and "speed kills" feels true, doesn't it?
*see www.numberwatch.co.uk for details -- great site.
Edit: got the Number Watch URL wrong, sorry.
>> Edited by Peter Ward on Thursday 4th March 10:09
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