Re: warning speed camera

All that's being argued is an absence of correlation between motorway speed limits and safety.

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And you don't think twice as dangerous as the safest is "pretty safe"?

No. We're defining "pretty safe". Yawn.

The "casualties" figures are pretty meaningless. They extend from the slightest graze to the beginning of "serious injury". Serious injury is defined as follows:

"An injury for which a person is detained in hospital as an ?in-patient?, or any of the following injuries whether or not they are detained in hospital: fractures, concussion, internal injuries, crushings, burns (excluding friction burns), severe cuts and lacerations, severe general shock requiring medical treatment and injuries causing death 30 or more days after the accident."

So something that a reasonable person might term a slight injury could sometimes also be classes as "serious" in the official definitions.

The big problem with "casualties" is in reporting. When is an injury an injury? When is it worth reporting? These tests are so vague that the figures can be massively influenced by such non road safety factors as confidence in the police and compensation culture.

The fatalities figures are entirely different. Fatal accidents are subject to proper reporting and extensive investigation. There's not a lot of room for ambiguity about whether or not someone is dead.

That's your lack of understanding, not mine.

that is a brilliant comparison :)

they are there to uphold the law, so some will take it to exteames and some will be more lenient but that's the same in any walk of life coppers need to be seen to be doing a good job as of late but they are just making it worse on themselves the guy who got done for doing 39 i a 30 while he was overtaking a tractor, and then got his mug shown across the whole world via news conference, should be the final nail in that coppers coffin i'd go so far as to say that the time, efftor and moeny spent on sitting there waiting for him to speed, taking him to court, prosecuting him, setting up the news conference, and all the other associated stuff, would have been better spent by bobbies walking the beat and making sure people saw that they were making themselves look high profile it deffinitly isn't worth the £60 fine he got is it, or do they pay country bumpkin wages out there :/

it won't be long before there is a serious backlash against this sort of thing, and that's when everything will turn to s*it

how many times do you look into your mirrors? all 3 of them? now add another second for looking at the speedo average that out over the course of, say, the 4 1/2 hour motorway journey that's been mentioned and see how much more time you will be spending NOT looking at the road

In message , Paul Smith writes

No.

No. You are trying to say that we should allow our below average motorway fatality rate rise towards the average just so as you can legally drive faster. You are trying to say that a fatality rate twice that of the UK is acceptable.

Looking in your mirror should be quicker than at your speedo as it requires less refocusing than going from a relatively long distance to a matter of a couple of feet.

In message , Paul Smith writes

No it clearly shows that you are talking out of your arse. If you think that a fatality rate of twice the current UK rate is something to aspire to or can be described as "pretty safe" then you have let your obsession with higher speed limits reach a dangerous level.

Raising the limits won't make them safer.

Raising our speed limits isn't going to half our fatality rate. If you think otherwise then you are deluding yourself.

It would mean less kiddy fiddling for a start :)

What drivel. What on earth makes you think that drivers are capable of judgung a safe speed without a set limit when it's so obvious that thay can't do it when there _is_ a set speed limit. Just because I haven't been involved in an RTA for 15 years and received my only speeding ticket 18 years ago, it does _not_ follow that I am a safe or considerate driver. I may very well be a nutcase that stands on the brakes for cameras and motorway bridges; why should I be entitled to a license? How would the police target and prosecute me? Please tell us all how you would determine whether a prospective driver can be trusted to drive considerately and saffely _before_ they receive a driving license.

I am innocent and have nothing to fear; unless I do something wrong, in which case I'll hope no-one noticed... but not bitch about being caught doing it.

I use my mirrors countless times in my 7 mile journey to or from work. If you find you don't have the time to check your mirrors or speedo, slow down.

Is speed enforcement much different, though? Yes, we are responsible for doing those things safely while speed limits can be enforced by the use of GATSOs and the like, but dangerous and inconsiderate driving regulations can be (and are, in the case of motorway junction stupidity) enforced using CCTV monitoring.

my point exactly you can look in the mirrors at a glance, but the speedo needs a bit longer to focus on so you end up looking in the mirrors and the speedo for a lot longer than you would think and if there weren't so many speed cameras to watch out far as well, you would have a much more relaxing drive :)

Surely you cannot believe that this is not just to woo voters?

In alt.uk.law dojj writted:

: how many times do you look into your mirrors? : all 3 of them?

rear view, about once per minute. Extremely quick procedure.

: now add another second for looking at the speedo : average that out over the course of, say, the 4 1/2 hour motorway journey : that's been mentioned and see how much more time you will be spending NOT : looking at the road

Yonks, I'd never thought of it that way. In fact, maybe you should consider that I've held a licence for twenty years, and have probably driven, say, 200000 miles in that time. Average speed let's set at 40mph, so that's 5000 hours. Allow 1/10th sec/min for rear view mirror use, and that means I've been looking backwards for nearly seven hours whilst in control of a car!

If you would like to report me to the police for driving without due care and attention, please feel free to use this as my full confession. Take ear plugs to block out their laughter. On the other hand maybe, with hindsight, you can see why your model generates a thoroughly meaningless number.

Gavin.

Absolutely it's enough to justify speed limits.

But present enforcement assumes benefits that simply don't exist.

In alt.uk.law Paul Smith writted:

:> ..as before, Paul, selective statistics to suit your premise. A link :>from your own page moves nicely on to the government data at; :>

: The "casualties" figures are pretty meaningless. They extend from the : slightest graze to the beginning of "serious injury". Serious injury : is defined as follows:

As I said, you are selective. The 'casualties' figures give every bit as valid an indication of the number of incidents as is the use of deaths. Probably more so, as they do not eliminate events simply because the severity the injury was not enough to cause death.

: The big problem with "casualties" is in reporting. When is an injury : an injury? When is it worth reporting? These tests are so vague that : the figures can be massively influenced by such non road safety : factors as confidence in the police and compensation culture.

The number of casualties has fallen, except for TWMVs, so the compensation culture has led to a decrease in the reporting of injuries? Cuts to the hand or a severed limb are not reported because the victims fear that the police will do what? Those are pretty hard arguments to sustain (or are you claiming that motor cyclists spearhead the compensation culture and trust of the police?)

: The fatalities figures are entirely different. Fatal accidents are : subject to proper reporting and extensive investigation. There's not a : lot of room for ambiguity about whether or not someone is dead.

The reporting and investigation are irrelevant when those data are eliminated in a two dimensional plot. Figures for fatalities only indicate the most severe accidents, and also include accidents where death is fortuitous, rather than an indicator of the severity of the accident. My parents were in a serious accident some years ago, and were pushed into a wall by a tractor. They missed having a 3-ton lintel drop on them by a matter of six inches. They do not appear in death statistics by those few inches. In short, both data sets are flawed, but it is convenient to you select the set that (you feel) supports your argument.

:> This againsta background of increased traffic, increased :>traffic density and increased car useage. I'm not going to claim that's :>the effects of speed cameras, because that would be far too simplistic :>an analysis - which is entirely the point - the problem is too complex :>for you to blame speed cameras, or any other subset of variables, for :>the death rate.

: That's your lack of understanding, not mine.

You don't acquiesce to understanding, you have adopted a hypothesis and you squash the data until they fit. Square pegs, round holes and a pile driver.

The reasons for accidents are complex. I think back over the people that I have known who have died in accidents, and each one is the result of a complex and individual set of circumstances. The data analysis of these events is far more complex than can be represented or interpreted by simplistic analysis.

Besides which, if I were you, I'd remove the least-squares fitted fifth order polynomials from my historical data plots before criticising anyone else's understanding and data analysis... ;-)

ATB, Gavin

Your point about "chance" is virtually irrelevant in samples of the sizes we're taking about. All the chances are represented include the freak deaths and the freak escapes.

I wrote: "by such non road safety factors as confidence in the police and compensation culture." I could probably organise a list of a dozen influences. The point stands.

Nah. Nonsense. See above.

Rubbish. The fatal accident data is the only data worth really trusting.

Yeah right. I haven't had to select, twist or misrepresent data at all to support my arguments. It's just there. Contrast that with the bizarre claims made by the Government, the DfT and the Scamera Partnerships.

You're completely confused about the difference between average road risks and the factors that create them and individual accidents. This is a common problem. You're probably also forgetting the billions of interactions between roads users which by some miracle, DON'T result in crashes.

If we choose the wrong strategy, we can expect extra accidents to materialise out of interactions which were previously benign. Which, of course, is exactly what's happening.

As an alternative, you might like to learn to read the supporting text.