Safe Speed in the Daily Mail Today
Discussion
There's no need to say "well done". Just send cash instead.
www.safespeed.org.uk/join.html
Best Regards,
Paul Smith
Safe Speed
www.safespeed.org.uk
motorbiker said:
speeding 1 in 8 crashes thats a lot of dead people if it is 10 people a day dead in the UK.
Yes it would be, except that's by no means the story in the figures. See this text from a further PR I sent out yesterday evening:
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News: for immediate release
LOOKING INSIDE THE 12.5%
Safe Speed recently highlighted that "excessive speed" was only the 7th most common factor in a study of road accident causation recently published by the Department for Transport. Just 12.5% of all road accidents had "excessive speed listed as one of the contributory factors.
But this is not the whole story. Within the 12.5% of "excessive speed" accidents we estimate that only about 30% involve exceeding the speed limit (based on the only UK data available, from Avon and Somerset Police).
The 12.5% also includes excessive speed factors classed as "definite, probable, possible and not-recorded."
And the 12.5% even includes accidents where "excessive speed" was a minor contributory factor.
So if we have a drunk driver skidding on ice at 20mph, that may well have been coded as an excessive speed accident.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed Road Safety Campaign said: "It's high time that the DfT came clean and published this vital road safety data in full. They have been gathering it since 1997 and we have been requesting it for over a year with no joy. Now that we have finally seen a small portion of it, it is crystal clear that the data does not support the modern policy emphasis on speed limit enforcement."
Safe Speed demands the immediate release of the rest of the data gathered since 1997, with full details including "factor groupings" and "confidence" data.
Paul continues: "This is the way we see it. We start with 12.5% of accidents where "excessive speed is listed as a contributory factor. Then we look at 30% of those that actually involved exceeding a speed limit - that gives us 3.75%. Then we look inside that 3.75 percent and eliminate those accidents within the "possible" category where speed wasn't likely to have been a factor at all. That get's us to about 3%. Then we look inside the 3% and eliminate those circumstances where the excessive speed and the accident both had a common cause (for example a drunk or drugged driver, a reckless driver, drivers racing or criminals escaping the scene of a crime). That's very like half of the remainder gone. We are left with about 1.5% of accidents that MIGHT have been caused by a normal motorist exceeding a speed limit. But even in this 1.5% the primary cause of the accident may not have been excessive speed. Many of them were probably inattention exacerbated by excessive speed. Finally we should look at the potential effectiveness of the speed enforcement. We know that enforcement by speed camera isn't very effective because they plan to issue more tickets every year and because speeding behaviour has not changed significantly in the last 5 years according to the DfT's own figures.
Paul continues: "The bottom line is that we have a vanishingly small proportion of accidents where the results are contributed to by normal drivers exceeding a speed limit. No wonder we're not seeing the national figures go down in the speed camera era!"
Paul continues: "Speed camera policy is a farce based on incomplete data, false assumptions and oversimplified thinking. Camera operations must stop now, and we must return immediately to the excellent policies that gave us the safest roads in the world in the first place."
<ends>
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Best Regards,
Paul Smith
Safe Speed
www.safespeed.org.uk
nick_f said:
So how do the figues map onto fatalities, as opposed to 'accidents'? Is it the same pro rata, or are fatalities more speed-dependant?
We can be quite sure that excessive speed accidents represent a higher proportion in higher severity accidents. But strangely enough, this turns out to be a major problem for the camera proponents. See this page:
www.safespeed.org.uk/problem.html
Best Regards,
Paul Smith
Safe Speed
www.safespeed.org.uk
Buzzinhornet said:
Having read another DfT report, they claim that the 12.5% figure is being misquoted.
What report is that then? Where can I read it?
Best Regards,
Paul Smith
Safe Speed
www.safespeed.org.uk
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