Not surprising really

Do us all a favour, post a short summary as well as the link.

Before speed cameras, the number of road deaths was falling dramatically but this is no longer the case. So do speed cameras really make our roads safer? On a chilly morning in west London, a gaggle of schoolchildren dress up in sunflower T-shirts as part of a bizarre publicity offensive for speed cameras.

The group that runs cameras in the capital, the London Safety Camera Partnership (LSCP) is handing out sunflower

Plus someone has looked at the statistics properly and, for the statisticians amongst us, they state the obvious that the apparent fall in casualty rates in places where speed cameras have been put is due to regression to mean - i.e. if there are lots of incidents in a short period of time (a requirement for a speed camera) then in the following period there is less likely to be incidents as the number of incidents in that location is 'evened out'. So the reduction is not actually due to a camera being there, more that is it a natural fluctuation and would have reduced whether a camera was there or not. Of course, real statistics make no difference to the camera partnerships as they need to justify their own jobs.

Matt

... and no-one ever mentions those counties having no fixed speed cameras where accident/casualty rates etc. are no worse than anywhere else. In fact, I seem to recall that they may even be lower.