Nuxx:8a88c202-d320-4628-bb5c-300c204407f6@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <8a88c202-d320-4628-bb5c-300c204407f6@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Let's Hear It Then Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:50:19 -0700 (PDT) Lines: 166 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.204.241 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1256 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1207983019 13896 127.0.0.1 (12 Apr 2008 06:50:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 06:50:19 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.204.241; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 10897 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:646833

It's time for the likes of SPINdrift to stop going on about irrelevant issues like ancient, peripheral web pages, individual forum posts from years ago, and the other copy and paste diversions of which he is so fond. It's time for those who are against Safe Speed to counter (or attempt to counter) the important stuff. We'll start off with this statement that Paul Smith made on http://www.driversvoice.co.uk last year. Instead of cherry-picking one or two lines, I would like Safe Speed's detractors to comment on every claim against cameras that Paul has made, and if they think that what he has said is correct, I want them to admit it, rather than just grudgingly saying nothing and moving on, which has been the the usual tactic on the many occasions when Paul has talked complete sense.

Generally in the camera debate, if someone talks sense, it should be acknowledged, no matter who has said it. Road safety is far too important for this juvenile "I'm only going to admit that something's true if the right person has said it" nonsense. We're all supposed to be on the same side (at least those of us who actually have an agenda to save lives, rather than a hidden wish to bully motorists off the roads).

I've added some comments of my own in square brackets in an attempt to pre-empt some of the more boring and predictable responses, so that hopefully we can have a somewhat interesting discussion.

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I Am Angry (Written By Paul Smith)

Paul Smith is the founder of safespeed.org.uk, and an anti speed camera campaigner. He has spent over 6,000 hours researching the overall effects of speed camera policy on UK road safety.

I'm not an angry man by nature. I'm a back room engineer. All my life I've been plodding away a million miles from the public gaze making systems work by designing them properly.

But how things have changed in the last few years. Now I'm a front line road safety campaigner, and no one is more surprised than me. And I am angry. I'm angry that the authorities are continuously misusing evidence and statistics to convince us that their prejudices are correct. I'm angry that our roads aren't getting safer. I'm angry that millions of safe drivers are being criminalised for nothing.

["It's not for nothing, it's for exceeding the speed limit." Yawn. Every driver speeds, even the ones who lie about it. Selecting a safe speed for the conditions, which may or may not be above an arbitrary number, is an essential part of driving, and expecting people to stay below what is frequently a very low number (especially nowadays) does nothing but de-skilling the driving process for no benefit whatsoever. It is perfectly possible to exceed the speed limit in complete safety, and criminalising so many drivers for doing this is indeed criminalising them for nothing, in that they're quite obviously doing nothing dangerous. There may be those (motorist-haters) who don't have a problem with criminalising drivers for nothing; as far as they're concerned, people deserve punishment just for driving at all. Well, they should really stop hijacking something as important as road safety in order to enforce their spiteful aims.]

There is nothing in the case for speed cameras that stands scrutiny. Every claim they have ever made is misleading, inaccurate, incompetent or just plain false. Now we have a speed camera industry handing out over 2 million tickets each year and the road aren't getting safer. [If you disagree, please cite one or more claims made in favour of cameras which you *honestly* believe are in no way misleading, inaccurate, incompetent or false.]

Let's look at some of those false claims...

They say crashes are down =96 usually by about 40% =96 at speed camera sites. This sounds impressive but it's a fraud. It neglects a particular statistical bias that arises when cameras are placed where there have been unusually high numbers of crashes. Some of those sites are nothing more than random clusters of crashes, and we wouldn't expect the random clusters to continue or recur anyway. They would have improved whether we'd put a camera there or not. With the rules that have been used to place speed cameras this effect is huge. We estimate that it gives rise to a 50% reduction at speed camera sites on average =96 and you get that effect without installing the camera. So when they install a camera and say crashes are down by 40% they may well be admitting to making matters worse. Neglecting this bias is a fraud because it is well known and understood. [Even Chapman has grudgingly admitted this. So my question to camera advocates is this: Why do SCPs, ministers and other camera apologists still commit this fraud so often, when they know exactly what they're doing, and why do you accept it and other frauds like it?]

They have been saying for years that one third of crashes are caused by speeding. But last year the truth finally came out =96 Department for Transport data confirms that only one crash in twenty (5%) involves any vehicle exceeding the speed limit. And notice that they can no longer claim that =91speeding' is the cause of the crash. Instead it's a possible contributory factor. Department for Transport also says that more than 50% of us are speeding under free flowing conditions on most road types. You could say that =91speeding was under-represented' in the crash statistics. On the face of it we're more likely to be involved in a crash when we're not speeding than when we are speeding. That's true =96 and there's a simple reason. We adjust our speed to suit the hazards and risks =96 slowest in supermarket car parks, fastest on motorways. We're most likely to be speeding where there are fewest hazards and places with fewer hazards have fewer crashes.

[This is one way in which the camera advocates here show that they have a fundamental problem with motorists: they simply cannot bring themselves to accept that motorists can be trusted to do anything, including adjusting their speed to suit the hazards and risks. They much prefer to think of motorists as inherently bad and irresponsible people, who need to be controlled. They have to be negative about driving, prescribing simple and draconian rules and punishments, rather than being positive about it and considering it as a skill.]

They are running that advertisement on TV with the child pedestrian. The claim is that 20% die in 30mph impacts but 80% die in 40mph impacts. That much is true. But it's not happening in the real world. Around 11,000 child pedestrians are injured in built up areas (30 AND 40mph speed limits) each year. If we were hitting them at 30mph we'd have well over 2,000 deaths. But we don't. For the last year of complete figures (2005) we had 47. That's under half of one percent. Clearly we're not running into them at anywhere near 30mph on average. The behaviour that saves has nothing to do with the speed limit. It has to do with drivers responding to hazards. Beyond even this, there are probably around 250,000 incidents each year involving child pedestrians in built up areas, with the vast majority ending in some braking and a brief scare. If the TV advert painted a true picture AND we simply =91stuck to the speed limit', we'd have 50,000 child pedestrians killed each year. Thankfully road safety doesn't work that way. It works when people manage risk. [Another fraud which is regularly committed by camera apologists. Again, why? If cameras work so well, why are we constantly being lied to and misled?]

It wouldn't matter that the claims were deceitful if, by some stroke of luck, the speed camera system worked to make our roads safer. But it doesn't. Our long term reliable year on year reduction in risk has gone. We've lost our crown as having the safest roads in the world. We're now =91bottom of the league'; 17th fastest improving out of 20 European countries.

We have a road safety disaster =96 and speed cameras are at the root of it. If earlier trends had continued, road deaths would be falling by at least 4% per annum and we'd have under 2,000 road deaths each year. But we have well over 3,000 still. We're over 1,000 lives each year behind expectation, and it's that, more than anything else that makes me angry. The authorities are sitting on their hands pretending that their policies are working. But their policies have failed.

[None of this "vehicle safety improvements have plateaued" rubbish, and similar stabs in the dark, stacks up. There was clearly a major change at the same time that cameras were introduced, and other than cameras themselves, there was no other policy change then that could reasonably be held responsible. Only someone who already had a pro- camera agenda would contend that cameras weren't responsible when nothing else fits. To any reasonable, open-minded person, cameras are by far the most sensible explanation for the fatality gap.]

They can't face up to the simple fact that road safety works because, and only because, individuals manage risk in real time. The false messages surrounding speed cameras are actually making us into a nation or poorer risk managers. We're all focused on the wrong safety factor. We're not developing our skills. Department for Transport doesn't even have a working definition of what it means to be a good driver.

And it's all gone wrong because of speed cameras. Over 28,000 signed our recent 10 Downing Street petition to get them scrapped. We won't get road safety back on track until they have all been scrapped. And I'll be angry until every last one has gone.