Blooming speed camera

In article , Bill Payer writes

Have you got references for the above?

I was amused to see a Gatso being moved on the back of a flatbed t'other day on the M5. It was in a long stretch of roadworks and the camera was complete with genny and hanging out over the side of the lorry pointing at the passing contraflow traffic. I wondered if it was powered up.

Regards,

Simonm.

If the UK had employed the same principles as in France we wouldn't all be complaining. In France about 100-odd meters before every speed camera there is a HUGE sign stating that there is a camera there. And it is always pretty obvious (from the ones I drive past) that they are situated in genuine accident hot spots, and not to catch people out. They have obviously learned the lessons of other countries well. Not sure how well they are doing at reducing their dreadful mortality rate on the roads tho, haven't seen any recent figures.

As I understood it, that is not strictly true. From what I have read, if the camera is flourescent then the local camera safety partnership gets any revenue generated from it, whereas if it is grey then central government gets the money. Not sure how true that is now, but that's what I read a couple of years ago when they started painting them yellow. There is still at least one grey one around here that I know of, and is active.

I have yet to see any evidence that shows speed cameras make any difference to traffic safety. Road deaths etc have remained stationary for quite a number of years now. When the local paper published the stats for each speed camera in our area (from my own stats analysis) in just over 30% of the speed camera locations the accident rate had actually gone up. Most of them it made absolutely no significant difference. There were a fraction where the rate of accidents had gone down, but not with any significance. As I recall, in a list of reasons for accidents speeding was 6th most common cause. Not that the government would have you believe that - every report they commission that doesn't tell them what they want gets quietly buried. Having said that, I'm not condoning speeding, in fact I think in heavily built up areas that it should be reduced to 20mph, especially outside of schools - but then that's only an opinion I've formed since we've had our 2 small children given their propensity to run off in random directions with no notice! But in other areas good road design plays far more of a part in reducing accidents than restricting speed, as there is always someone who is going to speed regardless of the limit. Rant over! :)

Matt.

...and Matthew Maddock spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

They always quote figures showing how installing a camera at a site reduced the accident rate. That's fine, cos it's true - most of the sites do show a drop in fatalities & injuries after a camera has been put there.

It's exactly what you would expect statistically. If the number of accidents at a particular spot varies over time (as quasi-random events must do), and you put a camera there after a peak in accidents in one year (as the Talivan authorities tend to do), then the next year's accident rate is highly likely to be lower. If (say) a junction on a fast road sees an average of three serious accidents a year, with a minimum of one and a maximum of five (over a ten-year period), it's likely that the camera will be installed after a year of four or five accidents. Next year, the accident rate is likely to drop towards the average again, and the stats will show an APPARENT safety improvement after installing the camera. It's common sense, really. It's called regression to the mean, and it's a well-known statistical phenomenon - except, strangely enough, to the Govt's statisticians, who seem never to have heard of it.

The true point is that the OVERALL rate of deaths and serious injuries is pretty much static*, suggesting that either a) the cameras are not reducing accidents but simply moving them elsewhere (a bit like how CCTV cameras in city centres push crime into the suburbs), or that b) the reductions reported at camera sites are only apparent, not genuine, and over a longer period of time will prove to be just normal statistical variation.

Either way, a lot of money has been spent, a lot of motorists criminalised, and a lot of decent people pissed off, all for no net improvement in the fatality rate. But it has raised millions for the Treasury without seeming to raise taxes, so that's fine.

*Prior to the widespread use of "safety" cameras, when we had policemen on the roads, the accident rate had fallen consistently since the mid-sixties. Not any more.

There are no fixed speed cameras in County Durham - are the numbers of deaths and serious injuries increasing? You all know the answer ...

Try this for starters..........enjoy.

As opposed to the NZ philosophy. They've taken down the warning signs and mostly use mobile cameras that they hide as well as they can. They ostensibly concentrate on accident prone areas, but when you look at the positioning of the cameras it is obvious that the entire speed camera programme is geared towards revenue generation rather than road safety.

Aye, the distance isn't fixed there is a range. ISTR that the first sign has to have the camera warning and speed, the second can just be a camera. The size of the signs is also important and the colour of background outside the red border. The statute that gives the details is online somewhere as I've seen it.

The cameras now can't be battleship grey they have to be brightly painted. Mind you just a few bolbs of orange paint on the camera body itself seem to satisfy that requirement. The post etc can still be grey.