How many accidents get an investigation? Not many so these statistics are pretty meaningless.
I would think most accidents that result in a fatality get an investigation, don't they?
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> I would think most accidents that result in a fatality get an investigation don't they?
every single one.......to the nth degree..........hence other posts in the past complaining of road closures nowadays whilst this investigation goes on...(which didn't use to happen as much)
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Westpig wrote:
...this means that 31% of UK road deaths had speed as a contributory factor...obviously this must also mean that 69% of road deaths did not have speed as a contributory factor.
...
This means that the current 'speed kills' campaign is a tad too simplistic isn't it.
Even supposing we accept WP's reasoning that 69% of deaths do not involve speed, this line of argument makes no sense. Let me illustrate with another example: not all early deaths are caused by smoking, and not all smokers early die as a result of smoking. But an awful lot are and do. Are we to conclude from this that smoking is not a significant public health problem, and something we as a society should try to persuade people not to do? More people would live for longer if they didn't smoke - fact.
Similarly with speed. Of course, road accidents are caused by all manner of things - lack of skill, lack of attention, lack of maintenance - as well as excessive speed. Very few are entirely un-preventable. Excessive speed is a cause of preventable accidents, just as smoking is a cause of preventable illness. Both accidents and illnesses - even the non-lethal ones - cost individuals and society dear in pain, suffering and lost productivity, so it's right for society to identify causes of these problems and attempt to reduce or eliminate them. I have no problem with my taxes being used to fund this effort. If other drivers volunteer their own contribution, by driving too fast past a bright-yellow box that a two-year-old can recognize as a speed camera, that's fine with me too.
Of course I'd like to see the other factors eliminated too, but the endless fixation on speed enforcement as being somehow unreasonable gets awfully boring. I don't think I drive especially slowly, nor that I'm any kind of super-talented Uberdriver; I have occasionally looked at a piece of road and thought the speed limit was unduly low; I've even suspected the odd camera of being positioned to maximize collars rather than safety; but I've never been flashed by one and never had a point on my 20-year-old licence. And that's the thing: if I can do it, so can anyone else, and everyone could find something else to worry about.
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Of course I'd like to see the other factors eliminated too but the endless fixation on speed enforcement as being somehow unreasonable gets awfully boring. I don't think I drive especially slowly nor that I'm any kind of super-talented Uberdriver; I have occasionally looked at a piece of road and thought the speed limit was unduly low; I've even suspected the odd camera of being positioned to maximize collars rather than safety; but I've never been flashed by one and never had a point on my 20-year-old licence. And that's the thing: if I can do it so can anyone else and everyone could find something else to worry about.
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valid view WDB.........but what i'd like is a reasoned weighting added to ALL the causes of accidents.....inc speeding if necessary.........not just picking on an easy one and hammering people for their transgressions, often unnecesarily
i'm saying there's times when speeding isn't that big a deal........if you get caught anyway because you're unlucky, so be it........you broke the law and took the risk.......it's the often evangelical way it's now being 'sold' that i think is unethical and ignores the other factors....... that is plain wrong IMO.
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I was led to understand that:-
"Speed was a contributory factor" could apply to any report that had the word speed in it when the young bird in the office was filling in the reporting paperwork.
Pulling out in front of someone as they didn't correctly estimate the approaching speed, even though it was probably below any limit.
Driving into the back of a tractor, due to inattention, as its speed was so low.
"I thought he was going too fast" - when there was no evidence and he probably pulled out without looking properly.
I've read somewhere that the oft quoted figure of (whatever it is 30%) has been replaced by the TRRL but it has been spouted so much as a mantra that its now indelible.
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I don't have a problem with speed cameras per se, but I do have a problem with:
- An obsession with speed on the part of 'safety-conscious' authorities and those that influence them
- 'Safety partnerships', which seem to suffer from OCCD (obsessive-compulsive camera disorder')
- The twin aims of generating revenue and demonstrating smugly that 'we are taking safety seriously
- Assuming a moralistic position and smugly arguing that anyone opposing cameras is uncaring and irresponsible
- Failing to understand risk and to take a proportionate response
- Varying speed lmits every mile or so on some stretches of road
- Applying lower speed limits on roads that happen to be busy but have a good accident record; reality is that busy single-carriageway roads enforce there own lower speed limit a) because there's always something happening (vehicles turming at junctions etc) and b) traffic is limited to the speed of the mimsers.
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Oh, and I have a problem with speed humps and traffic-hating councils that do all they can to impede smooth flow via speed humps, pedestrian lights and deliberately poorly phased traffic lights that increase pollution and noise.
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One type of accident that definitely gets recorded as speed related is when someone misjudges the speed of an approaching car and pulls out in front of it.
Give it more than a moment's thought and you'll realise just how cretinous it is to include this in statistics used to justify more speed cameras. I'm at a junction and I don't look properly, so I pull in front of a car travelling at 25mph, too late for him to stop. This becomes a speed-related accident on this (it could be a 50mph speed limit) road, and a justification for a speed camera.
Moronic.
V
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Sorry Vin but you are wrong - the number of accidents is only one reason for placing of a camera. In addition there needs to be proof that a large proportion of drivers exceed the posted limit by a set amount - if they aren't no camera.
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some speed camera installations have been inserted using false data....
e.g
1, known suicide spot, where the unfortunate person jumps from a bridge and then gets run over
by a vehicle
2, one bad accident caused by very poor driving/drink/drugs etc that has multiple fatalities
the road itself has little to do with it and neither does that patch have a particulalr speeding problem or general poor driving problem.....but up goes the camera
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Vin
Sorry have to disagree. Collision statistics forms are only completed in the case of Injury Collisions (In my force area anyway). If someone pulls out of a junction and states "The other car must have been speeding", it does not go down as a contributory factor. What does is something along the lines of 'Looked but did not see' or 'Emerged without looking' or 'Failed to judge other vehicles path or speed' (Cant remember the exact phraseology the forms are a real cure to insomnia!!). After all if they had correctly judged the other persons speed, which they claimed to have done, would they have pulled out or did they do it deliberatly?
I think Westpig is just trying to make a point about the self righteous Safety Scamera Partnerships. They justify their opressive behaviour by throwing statistics at us; which when examined, show a lack of credibility.
I have no no concerns re correctly sighted equipment in locations that can correctly justify them. What hacks me off is when they are located in revenue generating areas where the statistics and local knowledge do not corroborate their arguments
An example of this is (for those who know the area) is a road called Clough Road in Hull. A wide, nicely surfaced arterial road serving commercial and industrial premesis, which lends itself to perhaps straying over the 30MPH limit. Cameras have been placed on the road . Now I policed that road for 6 years and cannot recall any incident other than the odd skirmish that would justify the positioning of Scameras under the supposed criteria that is set.
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Fullchat
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Sorry this should have been included on my last post.
Secondly, Another main arterial road - Beverley Road has an apalling record of serious and fatal collisions. A reversible camera has been placed on a stretch of dual carriageway as you enter the city. NOT where the collisions are occuring. It seems that if you can put a road name or number against a road with high statistics there is a licence to position Scameras anywhere along it and it is my suggestion that often those areas are where there is they greater opportunity to raise revenue.
Another road linking Beverley and Hull had a 60 limit and was reduced to 30 and 40 due to the high number of collisions - fair does. The road has regular visits from the mobile Scameras. Yet it has not had any collisions of any consequence for a number of years. It does however produce a number of drivers straying over the limit. Surely there would be some credibility by moving the Scameras away and if the statistics showed an increas then fair enough. Atleast there would be some transparent rationale behind enforcement.
The creation of the Safety Scamera partnerships and they methods they seem to employ to justify their existance have alienated the public. It is only fare that their reasoning an arguments are transparent and based on sound evidence.
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Fullchat
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nicely put Fullchat, echoes my views entirely
i've lost count of the times i'll drive up an unfamiliar 'A' Road, choose my overtaking point and slap bang in the middle of it will be the camera..........yet this is the safest bit to do the overtake! ..... yet the stretch before, with the windy road, trees overhead, loss of vision, adverse camber, hidden access road etc has nowt and yet that's the bit people should be more careful
now if the former bit has a history of bad accidents........then i'll wear it.........but i suspect not, hence my moaning
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There, we all feel better now after a catartic release!
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Fullchat
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Westpig: surely someone clocked momentarily exceeding the speed limit during a safe overtake has a defence in law, given that magistrates have discretion? It used to be recommended actually.
Of course with the bureaucratised and mechanised camera racket perhaps it's tempting not to bother but just pay up. I feel that's what the system counts on.
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Lud,
I'm sure PU will correct me if i'm wrong, but in your scenario you'd have to admit the offence, with mitigating circs.......so you're going to be convicted and therefore will get the points, albeit hopefully not stung too much with the fine
the only other option is to say you didn't speed.......which would be incorrect, because you did.
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Doubtless it is something annoying like that, but the way I see it and the way a sane magistrate ought to see it is that momentarily exceeding the speed limit under those circumstances is not an offence but correct driving, while slavishly observing the limit would expose everyone to a hazard for a longer time and could be construed as an offence...
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I did this today - that Gti is too fast for its own good - I'm working on my defence, there is no statutory one !
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PU without his Mod Hard Hat on !
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Fullchat,
I'm not disagreeing with you in any way - I understand that what goes onto forms, etc, is accurate. It's just what happens on the way to official, amalgamated statistics that I object to. An article in the Telegraph, I think, highlighted how the "30% of accidents caused by speed" stats were reached. And, sure enough, they included one of your examples "Failed to judge other vehicles path or speed", which is where my example came from. Thus, the stats used to justify speed cameras as a whole are untrustworthy.
I'll try to track down the article.
I think we're violently agreeing here...
V
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daveyjp,
You're absolutely right. What I should have said is that the accident I described becomes justification for speed cameras (in general, not on that specific piece of road). My poor use of English, I'm afraid.
V
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In Luton there's an approx 2.5 mile single-carriageway road that runs parallel with a disused railway line (the old Luton-Dunstable branch, actually). Because it's relatively new and was designed purely to take traffic from A to B, bypassing the town's outskirts, there are no junctions along its length. In fact, apart from one gentle curve, it's entirely featureless: no pavements so no pedestrians (high concrete walls on either side). It's literally a conduit for vehicles. It's lit. It's pretty much the safest single-carriageway road that could be built.
The speed limit used to be 50. Now it's 40. Why?
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Why not ask the council or relevant body and get the correct answer I would think anybody on this forum knowing the answer are pretty slim.
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Rhetorical question, Bairsto. See me.
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It's pretty much the safest single-carriageway road that could be built.The speed limit used to be 50. Now it's 40. Why?
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"speed kills".......limit should be 30 and probably will be in 18 months time, by which time the agenda for a 20mph limit will have kicked in
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some years ago a roundabout outside Edinburgh (Newbridge) had an underpass built for traffic going from the M9 to the M8. It's not a tunnel, ie it's open to the air except where it passes under the carriageway above, it's motorway standard, ie full width, hard shoulder, central barriers etc yet from the day it was opened there's been cameras in the dip enforcing a very short 50 mph limit. So there were no accident statistics or history of speeding motorists to decide if a camera was needed then why, other than revenue collection, were cameras placed there? You end up with the ridiculous situation of driving at 70, braking for the camera at the bottom of the dip and then changing down and accelerating to climb back up to the 70 limit at the top again.
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