Speed Camera U-Turn As 500 Sites Rejected

15th July 2005

By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

The Government is blocking the installation of nearly 500 new speed cameras amid signs that ministers are beginning to doubt the effectiveness of the devices.

The 38 camera partnerships, which include police forces and local authorities, have been ordered not to use cameras at any new sites. The ban includes places where there have been several fatal crashes caused by speeding vehicles.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) condemned the ban, saying that it could cost lives because dangerous roads were being left unprotected by cameras.

The Department for Transport is reviewing the rules on deploying cameras after concerns that partnerships have failed to consider alternatives, such as improving junctions or erecting warning signs.

The review is being overseen by Stephen Ladyman, the new Road Safety Minister, who has been caught three times by speed cameras and at one stage had nine points on his licence, one offence away from a six-month ban. More than two million drivers received speed camera fines last year, a tenfold increase in less than a decade.

In a letter sent to the partnerships this week, the department said that it had decided not to approve any more sites until it received a report on the peformance of existing sites. It ordered partnerships to revise their budgets because they would receive less revenue than expected from fines. Under the scheme introduced five years ago, partnerships are allowed to keep a proportion of camera fines to pay for more cameras.

The scheme has prompted claims that partnership staff may favour cameras over other solutions because they need to ensure a steady flow of income to pay their salaries. The department is understood to be concerned that it may have exaggerated the benefits of cameras by failing to allow for the random nature of crashes...........

From:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1694858,00.html

 

15th July 2005

By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Ministers have ordered a study into the validity of claims that speed cameras reduce deaths and serious injuries by 40 per cent. The Department for Transport has used research showing a sharp decline in casualties at camera sites to justify the rise in fines.

But officials now admit privately that the fall may be simply the normal recovery that would be expected after a peak in crashes known as “regression to the mean”. Cameras can be installed only where there have been a spate of serious crashes. Under the law of averages, it is unlikely that the number of crashes would continue at the same rate.

Mervyn Stone, Emeritus Professor of statistics at University College London, said: “I am deeply sceptical of the data that has been concocted to support the increase in cameras.”

He said that the best method of assessing the impact of cameras would be to select two dangerous roads and install cameras on one but not on the other. But families of people killed by speeding drivers on roads without cameras might sue.

From:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1694719,00.html

 

My emphasis.

 

15th July 2005

By Mary Ann Sieghart

EVERY ROAD death is a death too many. Something must be done. I’ve got an idea: let’s cut the speed limit to 2mph and have speed cameras everywhere to enforce it.

Sounds silly? Of course it is. But you have to admit that a country in which people drove at slow walking pace would be a country that eliminated fatal car crashes altogether. It would also, however, be a country in which very little got done.

You see, the speed v. road safety argument is not all one way. There are trade-offs. At one extreme, you could have absurdly low speed limits and no casualties. At the other, you could have a free-for-all and loads of deaths. The trick is to find a point on the continuum at which the number of deaths is “acceptable” (yes, I know, no death is acceptable, but see paragraphs one and two) and at which travel does not take too much time out of people’s lives.

We have reached that point, and any further attempts to slow us down — particularly on long journeys — will cause drivers undue frustration.

Britain now has the safest roads in Europe. Last year saw the lowest number of road deaths since the beginning of the motoring age — 34 per cent fewer than in 1926, when cars were as rare as orchids. Isn’t that good enough...................?

From:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-1694857,00.html

 

Duh?! Shouldn't that be "flat" sided?!   15th July 2005 By Jenny Booth, Times Online

Speed cameras are fallible in some circumstances when the radar beam is deflected, it emerged today. The little-known phenomenon was blamed when a bus driver was threatened with prosecution after being clocked at 81mph. His tachograph showed that in fact he was proceeding at a sedate 29mph, and his bus was fitted with a limiter that prevented it exceeding 62mph. The incident happened on the A140 at Earl Stonham in Suffolk, when Trevor Martin, 43, of Ipswich, was photographed by a camera operated by Suffolk SafeCam. The effect, where the radar is reflected from a large slat-sided vehicle like Mr Martin's bus and is then bounced back from a vehicle moving in the opposite direction, is the same principle used by the American Air Force to disguise its Stealth bomber. Terry Marsh of Suffolk SafeCam admitted that it was generally known in the industry that speed cameras could make mistakes, but insisted that there was no need for the cameras to be changed as a human operator usually picked up any anomalies. "It is known that it is possible for a camera to record a speed inaccurately under sets of very rare circumstances," he said. "I think all camera operators have been aware of this since cameras were introduced. What can happen is that on large slat-sided vehicles the radar beam emitted from the camera can be deflected. If a similar vehicle is travelling in the opposite direction the beam can bounce off that vehicle and then back to the camera, giving an inaccurate reading. "That is what seems to have happened in this case in the first instance. "It’s difficult to be exact but it can probably affect vehicles from the size of a large estate car upwards. But I would stress that there has to be a very particular set of circumstances with vehicles travelling on the other carriageway at a certain speed for this to happen. It’s very rare. "There’s a similar principle with the Stealth bomber designed by the American Air Force. That is designed to hide itself from radar. It does that because it is made up of a series of slat sides which deflect radar beams in many different directions throwing the reading. That can happen by accident in certain circumstances to a speed camera." The Institute for Advanced Motorists immediately called for an overhaul of checking procedures by speed camera operators to ensure that more motorists were not being wrongly prosecuted. It said that camera operators had an obligation to ensure that the system was "robust" because of the potential consequences for motorists. But Mr Marsh said that this was not necessary, and that the case had been a rare one. He said: "Every speed camera is double-checked by a member of staff who views the footage and calculates the speed of the lorry by measuring the distance it has travelled in a certain time. "And in this case the operator has made a mistake. Whether he fell asleep when doing the checking or whether he accidentally clicked the button marked ‘prosecute’ when he meant to click the button marked ‘no further action’ I don’t know....

From:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1566476,00.html

 

My emphasis.