Speed cameras redux
We return to the subject of speed cameras, as previously covered on this blog. There I wrote about an article in Which? magazine which marshalled the scientifially-analysed data about speed cameras, and concluded that those arguing against them don’t have a scientific leg to stand on. The arguments against speed cameras are emotive; they don’t have science on their side, to quote the article.
There’s a new comment there from Paul of the “Safe Speed” organisation - which actually (despite its name) argues against speed cameras. I’ll quote his comment here (to save you the hassle of going there):
“The article in Which was really very superficial and not very accurate. You should be interested in our published comments: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/which.html
I totally accept that the author made an attempt at fair balance, but unfortunately he really didn’t dig deeply enough into the data and analysis he was presenting.
The Safe Speed website is now in excess of 350,000 words and over 7,500 hours of my best efforts have gone into it. It is completely unreasonable to suggest that Which presented “our best arguments”. It didn’t come anywhere close. For a brief overview of “our best arguments” see:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/againstcameras.html
Best Regards, Paul Smith”
OK, I’ve briefly gone to scan his site. The introduction begins: The way that speed cameras have been introduced to British roads has been shoddy in the extreme. Mm, not too prejudgemental then.
The number of speed camera fines is doubling every 3 years, yet roads fatalities are not falling at all. True, but as the Which? article pointed out, many fatalities occur on roads without cameras - minor roads, A roads.
There are lots of other arguments there. I think they still fail the scientific test; and many are arguable. For instance, at http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr110.html we’re told that Departtment for Transport data from 2001 shows Data from 13 Police forces for 2001 reveals the following most frequent accident contributory factors: Inattention 25.8%.. (as the highest-ranked cause). But inattention is inevitable when driving. The question is whether there is time enough to recover control of the car if something happens that distracts you, or you lose attention. The higher your speed, the less likely.
Safespeed seems to me to be trying to have it both ways: arguing that “the vast majority” of drivers are careful, responsible, etc etc, and that therefore we don’t need speed cameras. But the vast majority of people don’t break into peoples’ homes., We still find police useful to track down burglars, and take precautions against them. Also, drivers who impose their ideas of “safe” speed on others - say, by tailgating on motorways (a behaviour you can observe on any motorway every day) - now, would they belong to that “vast majority” or not?
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Arguments against speed cameras demolished wholesale (10 October 2004; score: 82.33%)
- That's funny, I thought the answer was 'an iPod' or 'Robosapien' (7 December 2004; score: 42.65%)
- What's the future of photography? (18 November 2005; score: 37.68%)
![[Valid RSS]](wp-includes/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}
December 2nd, 2004 at 12:50 pm
“But inattention is inevitable when driving.”
That may be so, but it’s not inevitable that all drivers will have the same level of inattention, or that the same driver will have the same level at different times. I know from personal experience that, as traffic speeds slow, my attention begins to wander. Put me on a free-flowing motorway at 70MPH and my concentration is entirely on driving. Put me on that same stretch of motorway in a 5MPH traffic jam, and sometimes I let my concentration slide just long enough to cause me to get closer to the vehicle in front than makes me feel safe. The same is true on any road where the actual traffic speed is reduced below the “natural” speed for that road.
And it’s not just driving where this can be observed, it’s a natural human reaction to external stimuli. If you’re having a slow day at work, it’s easy to end up daydreaming and not giving the work you have your full attention. On a busy day, you find yourself focussed entirely on your work to the point where you forget to eat, lose track of time, basically ignore everything other than performing the tasks needed to successfully do your job.
So arguing that reducing your speed will allow you more time to react is only true if you can be sure that, at this reduced speed, your level of inattention is no greater than it was at the higher speed. My experiences, and those of others who’ve discussed this same point, suggest this is not true.
“But the vast majority of people don’t break into peoples’ homes., We still find police useful to track down burglars, and take precautions against them.”
True, but this is a flawed analogy. Every time a burglar breaks into someones home, the homeowner suffers as a consequence. A driver who exceeds the speed limit is guilty only of exceeding the speed limit, in the overwhelming majority of cases no-one suffers as a consqeuence. So using speed cameras to detect and punish speeding drivers is more akin to prosecuting someone for simply walking up the path to your front door, on the assumption that they must be up to no good. Targetting burglars is more like targetting dangerous drivers, but speed cameras quite simply cannot do this, all they can do is measure speed. And that is not a measure of dangerousness, despite what the government spindoctors and anti-motorist pressure groups would have us believe.
“Also, drivers who impose their ideas of “safe” speed on others - say, by tailgating on motorways (a behaviour you can observe on any motorway every day) - now, would they belong to that “vast majority” or not?”
If you had read the relevant sections of the SafeSpeed site, you’d know that Paul does not condone tailgating or other forms of intimidatory driving, and it’s highly misleading to suggest otherwise. Paul and his supporters (a group which includes myself) are dead against intimidatory driving no matter what speed it occurs at - in the rush to demonise speed, don’t allow yourself to forget that too many dangerous drivers perform their acts at speeds low enough to make them immune to camera-based detection.
December 2nd, 2004 at 3:29 pm
Good points, Chris. However, the arguments about speed cameras tend to be divergent. The reason why we’re told they’re put in is to reduce the numbers of road-traffic-related deaths. If everyone drove at 5mph, there would be virtually no road deaths, apart from people crushed between cars (say). It would be a lot less than 3,500.
An absurd reductionist point, because we have to balance the number of road deaths against the need to get necessary goods and people around the country. Hence, we allow ourselves to drive faster in some places, not in others.
The argument that SafeSpeed has - if I’m summarising correctly - is that speed cameras have been put in to raise revenue, not to reduce deaths. It’s very easy to demonstrate that they raise revenue. It’s very hard to demonstrate that they save lives, because how do you “prove” something didn’t happen? (It’s like “proving” that the spending on Millennium Bug code fixes did some good, and saved lives.)
The point about the Which? article (referred to in the original post) is that it looked at the *scientific* data to see whether cameras reduced deaths. It wasn’t about “do they unnecessarily raise revenues”. Of course speed cameras collect fines. Of course some drivers do stupid, dangerous things at places far from speed cameras. But you have to start where you can. If we had a “spy in the cab” system that measured attention paid to the road, everyone would howl like crazy. Yet if that’s a leading cause of accidents…
Except the point is we’re talking about *fatal* accidents and those causing *serious injury*, not just accidents like the one a White Van inflicted on my car by trying to do a U-turn from the inside lane of a two-lane road. Fatal accidents and serious injuries do have a strong correlation with speed - refer back up to my 5mph argument. It’s about balance. Speed cameras restore the balance towards reasonable speeds, which reduces the chances of accidents. So I’m in favour of them.
This morning, a car skidded around the corner outside our house (icy country road) and took a chunk out of our house. Our kids could have been walking along there. Speed camera for the corner? If it would make people reflect a bit, yes. That’s what this really boils down to: making people who otherwise are selfish pause for thought.
December 3rd, 2004 at 12:57 am
“Hence, we allow ourselves to drive faster in some places, not in others.”
And I don’t have a problem with this basic concept. I do, however, object to speed limits being set increasingly based on political, rather than scientific or engineering, grounds. If a road was deemed safe with a 60MPH limit last year, why should it be reduced to a 40MPH limit this year if nothing about the nature or condition of the road has changed? I don’t have a specific road in mind here, but there are too many examples of roads which have had their limits reduced without any logical explanation, and too much inconsistency between different parts of the country regarding the typical limit that should be expected for a given type of road.
We all know that, barring roadworks and certain well-signed parts of the network, motorways are 70MPH, we don’t need to constantly scan the roadside looking for speed limit signs. We SHOULD also be able to know with similar confidence that a dual carriageway constructed to motorway standard is likely to be a 70MPH limit, or that a single carriageway A road outside of residential/pedestrian areas is likely to be a 60MPH limit, and so on. Sadly this is not the case, leaving drivers with no alternatie but to spend increasing amounts of time scanning for any evidence of speed limit signs, whilst also scanning for the inevitable camera and wondering “just what is the limit here?”, sometimes braking to 30MPH just to be certain they don’t get caught out because the poor quality of signage has left them genuinely unable to state the actual limit with enough certainty to gamble 3 points/60 quid on being right.
“The argument that SafeSpeed has - if I’m summarising correctly - is that speed cameras have been put in to raise revenue, not to reduce deaths.”
Based on the way speed cameras are operated at present, by camera partnerships whos funding comes directly from the revenue generated by the cameras under their control… Most SafeSpeed supporters do recognise that cameras CAN be used as part of an overall road safety package, but believe that the current system is flawed due to the link between speeding fine revenue and partnership income, and because of the growing reliance on automated detection systems - at the expense of traffic police numbers - that simply cannot apply any notion of common sense or discretion. Note that we tend to praise areas such as County Durham where speed enforcement remains in the hands of the police, knowing that the people operating the speed traps will get paid just the same regardless of how many or how few speeding fines are dished out, and that anyone seen momentarily blipping over the limit is not likely to get anything more than a stern glare from the officer on patrol, but the reckless idiot tearing down the road at a truly unsafe speed will end up being chased, stopped and removed from the roads.
Cameras can only persuade/coerce drivers into slowing down momentarily, if someone is willing to risk having their photo taken (or is simply driving a stolen, unregistered or cloned plate car), then they’re free to drive as fast as they like safe in the knowledge that PCs Gatso, Truvelo and SPECS can do nothing about it. And even if they are driving a car which can trace back to them, they’re still left to roam the roads freely for two weeks until that brown envelope drops through their letterbox. Cameras are not bad at detecting vehicles driving above a set speed, but only a police patrol can STOP people from speeding right there and then, no matter how much effort they’ve put into anonymising their vehicle.
So basically, there is a growing feeling that the camera partnerships are, like so many organisations introduced by government in recent years, little more than a self-perpetuating meal ticket for their employees, using the general public as a bottomless piggy bank to raid whenever the petty cash runs out, and hyping up the speed kills message in an increasingly desperate attempt to justify their existence. We’re not all callous self-centred speed freaks who want to be able to use the public roads as racetracks, most of us DO care about road safety. We just don’t think the camera-led approach is working, nor will it ever work if left to continue in its present form. We’re not against speed enforcement as such - we want to see more traffic police on patrol. We’re simply against enforcing limits in a way that can criminalise someone for a momentary lapse, or for rigidly enforcing a limit 24 hours a day even if the conditions which justify that limit only occur at certain times of the day.
“But you have to start where you can.”
We seemed to be doing quite well without cameras, when the roads were policed entirely by, strangely enough, the police.
“Speed camera for the corner? If it would make people reflect a bit, yes. That’s what this really boils down to: making people who otherwise are selfish pause for thought.”
The problem here is that the car skidded because their speed was inappropriate for the corner given the icy conditions. You don’t say whether or not their speed was above or below the limit, or whether in good conditions they would have safely negotiated the corner. If their speed was below the limit, then a camera would do no good unless you also reduced the limit on that stretch of road. Problem then is that this lower limit would apply all year long, even when the weather was such that travelling at the original higher limit would be entirely safe.
A camera used for situations like this is a very blunt instrument, what would be better is a vehicle activated sign (VAS) that warned approaching drivers of the bend. Such signs have been shown to be more effective than cameras, and I am pleased to see them appearing in more and more locations that might otherwise have ended up ruined by the installation of a camera.
December 3rd, 2004 at 5:07 pm
“The argument that SafeSpeed has - if I?m summarising correctly - is that speed cameras have been put in to raise revenue, not to reduce deaths.”
Not at all. I’m perfectly convinced that speed cameras are generally used with the intention of reducing crashes. But, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The trouble with speed cameras is that they don’t normally measure the sort of speed that contributes to crashes, while atthe same time they have side effects that strike at the core of road safety.
A careful read of the dicument previously cited: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/againstcameras.html should explain this in adequate detail.