Safe Speed Forums

Hi!

I am starting this as a new thread because I am intrigued - I have been surfing through the discussions and this seems to be a claim that is being made quite often. Can someone please explain how they believe that speed cameras cause deaths?

My feeling on this is very much that if you choose to ignore a law and get busted, you can't go around crying about it - you knew the law, you chose to ignore it, you got caught - tough! The argument that seems to be used often here to refute this is that in fact speed cameras are causing deaths. I have obviously missed the post in which the reasons were explained - can someone please explain how?

Many thanks

Hi,

That's an excellent question with a complex answer...

The best starting point is probably this document:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/againstcameras.html

and then there are these:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/why.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/tiger.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/effects.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/fatality.html
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/dangers.html

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

That's right, Lizzey. The thinking is that cameras force us to obey speed limits, and that obeying speed limits takes up too much of our attention, causes inconvenience to others (who want to go faster than the limit), makes us drive badly by making us go at a pace we don't like, and we get sleepy because we are going so slow!

Despite that, people here think that speed limits are a good thing overall. It sounds like a load of tosh to me as well, but these people are serious and have done a lot of thinking about it.

I prefer to obey the speed limit, and I couldn't care less when a speeder gets done, but I'm on my own here!

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I stole this .sig

I know you're in the minorit, but I don't think that really makes it right for you to misrepresent and understate our position. The two biggest factors in our argument against cameras is that:

* They replace valuable road safety policies with something useless (or worse). If the original policy would have saved 100 lives and the cameras save none, then that's 100 lives lost due to cameras in my book.

* They encourage (even cause) road safety attitudes that are dangerously oversimplified.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

OK, so it seems that maybe it is more that people feel that more attention should be paid to other factors in causing deaths rather than just focussing solely on speed than that speed cameras are actively killing people. I can agree with that. What I don't really see is the case for speed cameras causing deaths though - are people seriously trying to argue that because they were slowing down to 30 they didn't see someone pull out in front of them?! Or that they wouldn't have hit that child if they hadn't been looking at the speed limit sign? Then they shouldn't be considered sufficiently equipped to drive a car anyway.

I have to go with Basingwerk on this one. Saying "don't speed" is as easy as just not speeding, regardless of the factors. I may, on rare occasion, accidentally exceed the speed limit, but if I got caught that would be a hands-up situation - I certainly wouldn't be shouting "go and catch some real criminals" or claiming I was disgusted that the authorities were correctly doing their job - I am sure heroin addicts feel similarly put upon when they are stealing simply because they feel they have no other choice if they are to fund their habit!

I am rather disturbed by some of the posts I have seen here re:speeding. I have in my time been unfortunate enough to get involved in discussions with habitual drink drivers and their excuses are similar to the ones I am seeing here to justify speeding - i.e. it is late at night, so no-one is about etc. One person has suggested that they were unjustly convicted of speeding because they were doing 84 miles an hour at night. So, let me understand this correctly. The safe speed has been adjudged to be 70 miles an hour maximum in this country. We are not told what the limit was on this particular road, but I am giving benefit of doubt here and we'll say national speed limit. So, going 24 miles an hour over the speed limit is justified because of the reduced visibility (i.e. it was dark). I cannot understand the argument I am afraid!

As paul said the answer is complicated. There have been several policemen who have been caught speeding who have said in court that they thought they were driving safely.

The main point here is that safety is not specificaly a speed issue. And that the focus on speed has been detrimental to road safety in general.

Cumbria started up a speed camera partnership two years ago. Since then the death toll has gone up 15%. And yet they claim sucess in their activity. We consider this kind of poblicity spin to be wrong.

More people are dying on the roads since cameras were introduced, I think the evidence speaks for its self.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Part of the answer to your last post is in your comment that "The safe speed has been adjudged to be 70 miles an hour maximum in this country." It has not. This is a maximum decided for political and or/social reasons and cannot be based on safety as no regard can have been taken of road conditions.

This is one of the main issues put forward on this site - that drivers should be empowered to set their own safe speed for the conditions.

The issue is safety not the breaking of arbitrary laws.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

It was my understanding that the speed limit was considered to be the safe limit on a given road where conditions are so favourable that the design features of the road govern. Therefore conditions are very much factored in.

Surely you are not really advocating that there be no limits at all and that each of us - arbitrarily - sets our own speed limit? How can that really be seen to be promoting safety?

If that is the case why do we have speed humps in a 30 limit that cannot be crossed at 30...

It is the assumption that gives rise to the problem that many accidents occure at "inapropriate" speed. These may be within the limit but too fast for the conditions. These stats were used to justify speed cameras even though the car was not actiualy breaking the speed limit.

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Speed camera policy Kills

I don't agree that I misrepresented the case earlier, BTW. I had just spent a day prising out an acknowledgment that people here think that obeying the speed limit can be dangerous, and I had more or less secured it before they spotted my tactic! Anyway, you see the same problems as I do. They seem to want the limit and they don't want the limit at the same time, which I contend is incoherent. But I'm a voice in the wilderness.

The guff seems to be that speed limits are for neophytes, and that really good drivers don’t need them, and shouldn’t have to obey them all the time. They contend that the old situation, when cameras were not invented, was safer and they have some figures that show this might be true. That is the galling thing to me, actually. Even though their argument is incoherent to me, the figures might be on their side!

It’s almost as if the very fact that drivers were less jumpy before cameras came in made them drive more safely! Maybe, just maybe, there is something in it, although I have always suspected that many of the people on this site are car men, who enjoy a fast ride.

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I stole this .sig

It'd be best if you read the links I offered with some care. There's a lot of carefully researched information there and it goes a long way towards answering these questions.

These particular points are addressed on this page:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/why.html and on
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/background.html

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Lizzey Dripping wrote:



The safe limit for people who aren't the law

What annoys me is that people seem to be able to adhere to the limit within 10-15MPH or so but when the conditions get bad they stick to the limit-as if that is safe in a blizzard or heavy spray after a rain storm. I was nearly rammed off the road today for doing 56MPH in spray on the motorway with lights on-drivers were still doing 80-90MPH...Urrgggh

Got to remember as well that motorway limits were set in the 1960's when most cars top speed was barely 70MPH. The limit was to stop nutters cracking 150MPH in E type jags in amongst ford anglias doing 40MPH Now most cars can do 70MPH without even thinking about it.

Andrew

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It's a scam........or possibly a scamola


Homer Simpson

Weren't no blanket limits in the 50's. Only 30 in built-up areas.

Aah! the good old days

OK, I'll bite.

Until the last year or so, I used to choose the speed to travel by time rather than by miles per hour. If I had enough time to spot and avoid hazards, it was safe. Of course, I tempered this with some deference to speed limits. Basically, I had a scan pattern where I'd scan ahead from near to as far as I could to identify possible hazards as soon as possible and then rescan, paying particular attention to the hazards identified until each could be discounted or developed into a "problem". My normal "anticipation region" was at least ten seconds ahead and I reduced speed to keep that true where necessary. On no account would I drive with less than a four-second region (except for some very rare geographical factors - and boy did I feel scared until I had my safety zone back!) About the only time I gave my speedo more than an occasional glance was when I had a police car on my tail - and boy did my driving suffer as a result.

I had over two decades without an accident and suffered about one near miss (I suppose) every four or five weeks.

Now, the draconian and pedantic enforcement of speed limits to the exclusion of proper road safety has changed my priority from safety to preservation of my licence. I now do not exceed speed limits knowingly. However, to do that I need to know two things at all times: the speed limit, and my speed. Ensuring that I have that knowledge takes a huge amount of attention away from my scan. Speed limit signs have a habit of becoming hidden by vegetation and by other road signs. So, to ensure that I always know the speed limit, I need to scan the road sides above the level of my safety scan. To always know my speed (particularly in an auto where you can't use engine speed as a guide) requires constant checks of my speedo.

So, to ensure that I always obey the speed limit, I have to fit three scans into the time I used to fit one. This means that, at the speeds I used to travel, my scan-ahead zone would reduce to about four seconds. However, I don't travel quite so quickly now, so that has only reduced to about five seconds. Yes - rigid obedience of the speed limit has significantly reduced my observation and anticipation - and that can't be good for road safety.

Also, by not exceeding the speed limit, I'm frequently driving well below the 85th percentile speed. This enrages some drivers, who then do almost unbelievable things to get past.

So, my rigid obedience of the speed limit is more dangerous than my previous use of the speed limit as a guide. This is corroborated by the fact that I've been rear-ended twice in the last year (so ruining my previous decades of accident-free driving), and that my near miss rate has increased to approximately one for each day driven.

Of course, I don't suggest that speed limits be abolished. However, I would suggest that current practice of reducing limits inappropriately and rigid enforcement cease. Further, I suggest the reinstatement of proper policing to actually deal with dangerous driving. I believe that speeding should be used as a tool to expedite dealing with dangerous drivers. That's how it used to work. I don't believe that the original legislators meant anything more. Yet "speeding" has become the focus of the current authorities' fixation to the detriment of proper road safety.

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Will

It's not so much that scameras are literally responsible for causing deaths (except in the highly unlikely event of one falling on someone). It's the policies of a few successive governments that have brought the things in and then increasingly relied upon them to deliver road safety on the cheap.

The sad reality is that there's probably quite a few like this out there. basingwerk likes to call them the Thumb In Bum, Mind In Neutral brigade, others just call 'em numpties. Whatever label we hang on them the question has to be: how the hell did this muppet pass his driving test? I think you said in another thread you've been driving for 3-4 years, so I'm sure there's been occasions when you've wondered this aloud in response to someone's particularly deranged or dormant display of driving.

Two points to consider about the presence of numpties/TIBMINs. First, what does that tell us about the real quality of driver instruction and ongoing training in this country? Basically, it doesn't take too much to get through the theory, the L test proper doesn't really demand a great deal, and ongoing training is non-existent except for voluntary courses, and even then the incentives for going on them really need to be much stronger. Search through some of the older threads and you'll find some long discussions about this. The second thing about numpties/TIBMINs is that having let the eejits out on the road in the first place, the last thing we want to do is make them worse by causing unecessary distractions. Put it like this... I'd rather have one of these clowns go past a school at 35 watching the road than at 30 watching something else. Stick a Gatso up and the prat will look at the Gatso. Tell him, even if only by implication, that the speed limit defines safety and the idiot will spend more time looking at the instruments than he should.

Well, I wouldn't come out with remarks like "go catch a burglar" either. Poor old plods probably get sick of hearing it five times a day . But I would be wondering why they were bothering with speeders when there are some real headcases on the road that regularly present a genuine danger. Actually there's nothing to wonder about. It's done because it's easy and because several governments have confused activity with acheivement. On that basis, I certainly am disappointed that the powers that be have failed to do the job properly. They might as well have the SFO chasing unpaid TV licenses.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The last 2 posts are EXCELLENT.

Willcove, I identify with much that you write, I also have this uncomfortable feeling when driving that... I may have inadvertently missed a speed limit sign, or a semi-obscured speed-trap, what EXACTLY is my speed, gosh the rest of the traffic seems to be going 5-10mph above the limit, hmmm I wonder if I'd crept a little over the limit back there...

My experience is of having EXTRA work to do, and unless I am driving SIGNIFICANTLY under the speed limit, that slight uncomfortable feeling remains. I do NOT feel I am driving any safer under the robot speed enforcement regime.

Gatsobait, good points about "numpties" and distractions. concentration etc., very well written post.

Then you have already decided that those of us that prefer to drive at a safe speed and not the ridiculously low posted limit, are bad drivers.



I think you might feel differently about that when it does actually happen. For one, you then realise that your 'on rare occasion, accidentally exceed the speed limit' can easily remove your licence. You only need 4 of those minor infringements, take it to its natural conclusion, and if TPTB get there way, cameras will be so rife that youd never get 10 miles without losing your licence. However, if this causes you to be brow beaten into submission, thus rigerously adhearing to these random numbers on lollipops, can you honestly say it will be contributing to the overall safety of the road. A good driver would not believe so in my opinion.



Drink driving is very different, for many reasons, and there really is no justification for doing it, as drink clearly effects a drivers ability, doing 68 in a 60 does not.



You thinking about speed to literally. The limits are at best a compromise between many factors. (Notice how all the speed limits dont adjust automatically for the conditions?) Its the driver that should be able adjust accordingly, and if you think 84 must mean death and carnage just because its a higher number than the posted limit, then its you that should not be on the road.

As for comparing people who occasionaly exceed a limit to real criminals, what a ridiculous statement. I'd know for certain I was doing wrong is I battered an old lady or nicked you purse or stole a car. My social concience tells me its wrong, and as such I dont do it. Surely you dont consider yourself a criminal when you 'occasionally exceed a limit'? If you do then you have truly been brainwashed and your sense of moralitl has been forever subverted. If you REALLY felt guilty about it, then you wouldnt even occasionaly do it. The fact that you and millions of others DO do it, and daily without inconviencing so much as a blade of grass at the side of the road, should tell you something about the nature of the alledged crime.

In short... to keep hold of your licence these days means you need to be monitoring your speed and on the lookout ALL the time for speed signs and gatsos, which can nevere be considered conducive to safe driving.

If you live in Suffolk, youll know what I mean, as you never quite know if youve missed another ridiculous 30 sign.

As I said in a post some time ago, no matter how good a driver you are can you absolutely guarantee that at any given moment at any time that you are not breaking the speed limit. If not you are at risk of getting caught on camera. I asked this question of “basingwerk”. I never got an answer.

Because I need my license for my job I seem to spend all my time scanning for mobile and fixed cameras or looking at my speedo when I am in a camera zone. This WILL have an impact on my reaction to things that happen in the foreground.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Well I know that, and the answer (I hope) will be mass introduction of annoying warning tones that sound if you are breaking the law. But while we go without that technology, there is a risk.

But here is a question that Gizmo may not want to want to answer - is it wrong to try to obey the speed limit? Should one try and stay in the law as it has been agreed? Or are drivers a law unto themselves? And is it OK to turn a blind eye, in order to have a little speedy fun sometimes?

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I stole this .sig