Re: OT: Texas Speed Cameras

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Andrzej Rosa wrote:

Dnia 2008-02-18 Tom Anderson napisa?(a):
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008, Andrzej Rosa wrote:

No, it's actually a donation. It's voluntary.

Like most taxes. For example you may not pay a road tax by simply not
having a vehicle, and so on.

To a point. The difference is that this is a 'tax' that you don't need to
stop doing anything legal to avoid. Describing it as a tax is like
describing fines for assault as a tax.

It would be the same, if there was an industry worth billions based on
taxing people for assault.

I don't see how that's got anything to do with it.

Look, it's really simple. Speeding is illegal. There is a legal punishment for doing it, and that's a fine. There is a mechanism in place for detecting those crimes, and enforcing that punishment. No taxes involved.

Except, of course, that the statistics show clearly and unambiguously that
this isn't true - speed cameras reduce accidents.

Which statistics? I put "speed camera statistics" in Google and first
link shows titles like "Fatalities rise in areas with the most speed
cameras"

http://www.speedcameras.org/speed-camera-news-article.php?id=113
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/29/nspeed29.xml
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=406769&in_page_id=1770

That's just several links, one after the other form the very first page
spat by google.

From a driver's pressure group and two right-wing newspapers - no, sorry,
one right-wing newspaper, and the Daily Mail! Hardly reliable sources!

Good enough to show, that I'm not the only one highly doubtful about
the whole business.

True. Presumably, you're now going to post some links to creationist websites as evidence that evolution isn't true? And maybe some links to gun nut and climate change denier sites too?

Actually your view seems to be shared by a minority.

Citation? The government surveys say a majority of people support speed cameras.

How about a couple of reports from the government:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/speedmanagement/nscp/nscp/thenationalsafetycameraprogr4597

Good one! They claim, that 30% less vehicles were breaking the speed
limit at the site (possible, though I imagine that it would be hard to
prove).

Uh? How is it hard to prove? You do a survey of vehicle speeds, you put in a camera, you do another survey, you compare the results. As the report says:

"Each partnership was asked to conduct speed surveys at camera sites before installation and then periodically after. This was to assess the immediate and longer-term impacts on vehicle speed. Over 20,000 speed surveys have now been conducted and analysed."

Results?

"There was a 31% overall reduction in the proportion of vehicles breaking the speed limit at new camera sites. This was most noticeable at fixed camera sites, where the number of vehicles exceeding the speed limit dropped by 70%, compared to 18% at mobile sites."

"There was a 51% overall reduction in excessive speeding (ie. 15mph more than the speed limit) at new camera sites. This fell by 91% at fixed camera sites and by 36% at mobile camera sites."

Only about 10% of accidents are associated with excessive speed, out of which only 30% involves speeding, out of which only unidentified minority is caused by speed. What a job! It should show something like 0.000001 decrease in the number of accidents!

Well, it shown much more. Miracle, or regression toward the mean?

Or is the 'only 10% of accidents are associated with excessive speed etc' statistic bull***?

Your call.

I'll take my suggestion.

They control for regression to the mean in the study. It's a small effect. The 42% reduction in people killed or seriously injured at camera sites is not.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/research/rsrc/roadsafetyresearchcompendium4724

Of course, you could dismiss those as being whitewashes by a pro-camera
organisation.

DfT themselves seemed to do much better job than I could by actually
admitting to whitewashing data. Mainly the amount of heavy injuries
which supposedly went down, while hospitalization period, overall number
of injuries, number of fatalities and probably something else didn't
show any similar trend.

It's your country. Go check them.

No need, you've done a fine job - fewer people were injured, and none of the other indicators got worse. What with all the people stamping on their brakes all the time, that's pretty amazing!

I'm aware that "proof by Google" isn't exactly binding, but I provided a
reasonable model how speed cameras increase a chance of collision, which
is hard to argue. It simply works like that.

No, it doesn't. In the UK, at least, cameras are signed well in advance,
so there's no stamping on the brake.

Like these ones?
http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso.htm

....

Is that page a piss-take?

"All the cameras on this page are solely for raising revenue as I can't see any other reason for their presence. Most of them are on rural roads with a low speed limit."

Rural roads with a low speed limit - so the ones where people are most likely to speed, and where the road is most likely to be dangerous at speed, with poor sight-lines and so on, then?

Anyway, what i said is that the cameras are *signed* well in advance - there's a sign that tells you there's going to be a camera. That the camera itself isn't very visible is *completely* irrelevant, since you can slow down when you see the sign. If you wait to see the camera itself before you slow down, you're frankly insane.

The pictures on that page are mostly shot in such a way that you mostly can't evaluate the signage - they're taken from too close, past the sign, or from behind the camera, where you wouldn't be able to see it anyway. In the second picture, the author blathers on about a speed sign hiding the camera from one of the lanes, despite the fact that there's a bloody obvious camera sign on the right of the photo!

Christ, it gets better:

"This stretch has an unrealistic 50mph limit with the usual array of Gatsos. This has the undesirable effect of making traffic 'bunch up' which also makes it difficult to overtake."

Overtake? So everyone's doing 50, because that's the speed limit and it's being enforced, and he's worried about overtaking? Why? Where's he going to go - once he's overtaken, he can only do 50 anyway! Clearly, he wants to overtake because he doesn't care about the limit, and he wants to go fast!

A bit further on, he moans about one in Ilkeston that's again hidden behind a sign - only this time, the sign is a 'children crossing' sign, which usually means there's a school or playground neaby. Oh no! How dare they enforce speed limits near schools and playgrounds!

Anyway, didn't you say Poland had next to no speed cameras? How come you
know so much about the evils of them, eh?

We have traffic wardens hiding in the bushes and earning a second
salary this way. No speed cameras, but the same principle.

Actually last year I left a several meter long front wheel skid mark due
to an attempt to catch me speeding. Clever, but not exactly safe for
anyone.

No, agreed. This is a pretty bad idea.

If it works in any positive ways is debatable. ("Speed kills" kind of
argument will not cut it.)

Why not?

It's at best simplistic, at worst simply wrong. You guys have 8000
of speeding cameras in the UK (which cost you literally billions).

Billions for 8000 cameras? So they cost hundreds of thousands of pounds each?

Funny, i could swear this says 20 to 40 thousand:

http://www.speedcamerasuk.com/Gatso.htm

But hey, what's an order of magnitude between friends?

Can you show a decrease in fatalities associated with that?

Yes.

Can you show that an average speed of vehicles is decreased overall?

Yes.

Well, you can't. Neither is true for UK.

Wrong.

So why pay all those billions?

Hundreds of millions. One or two hundreds of millions. And the fines raised more than covered it.

Simply increase taxes, if you want to pay more. It will be more efficient and nobody will get hurt by erratic driving.

Funny, looks to me like the cameras mean *fewer* people get hurt by erratic driving.

tom

--
All London roads are part of MY London Cycle Network. I'd like to see
some of them removed from the London Motor Network! -- Ben Jefferys
.

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