Speed Cameras Cost-Effective Road Accident Reduction or

1. Speed Cameras Cost-Effective Road Accident Reduction or Expensive and Dangerous Confidence Trick? A review based on many thousands of hours' study since 2000 of policies and benefits – real or imaginary. Idris Francis B.Sc. idrisfrancis@fightbackwithfacts.com 01730 829 416 07717 222 459 May 2013

2. Safer Roads Humber Annual Safety Camera Progress Report April 2010 – March 2011 59% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured at core safety camera sites in the Humberside Partnership area 42% reduction in the number of injury collisions at core safety camera sites in the Humberside Partnership area £73,223,760 saving in terms of killed or seriously injured9% reductionin the average speed and a 11% reductionin the 85th percentile speed 32% reduction in the number of vehicles exceeding the speed limit at camera sites.

3. Safer Roads Humber annual report 2010- 2011Published March 2012The partnership has now been operating safety cameras for eight years and the annual report gives details of the partnerships performance at core safety camera sites……..Figures from the report show that, in the eight years since safety camera enforcement began, there has been a 59 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured at the core safety camera sites. In real terms there are 411 people alive and well today that would have been killed or seriously injured if safety cameras had not been introduced.

4. Hull City Council, like many other Councils across the country, recently decided to stop funding speed cameras, North Lincolnshire considered doing so but then decided to continue funding in view of the casualty reductions supposedly achieved. Who was right – are Safer Roads Humber’s claims justified, wishful thinking or indeed deliberate misrepresentation? And even if the claims were justifed, would they represent good value for money compared to spending the same money in other ways? Let's take a closer look at the numbers – starting with basic information about road and other deaths;-

5. Deaths Each Day in Britain (approximate) All Causes...........................................................1,800 Avoidable Hospital Deaths (infection, medical errors, neglect etc. ...............................................200 Suicides....................................................................10 Falls at home.............................................................7 Road Deaths, all kinds ..............................................6 As above, involving speeding ...................................1 Primarily caused by speeding...................................0.5 As above, on the 2% of roads with cameras ...........0.05 (0.003%) Might a visitor from another planet wonder why we are spending £100m a year trying to reduce 0.003% of deaths in this country, when the same money could save vastly more lives spent in other more cost-effective ways? Like mops, buckets and disinfectant? When being in a hospital bed is several hundred times per hour, more likely to result in accidental death than being in a car at 70mph on a motorway ?

9. Main Causes of Long Term Downward Trends in Fatal and Serious Injuries • * Improvements of all kinds in vehicle design - better brakes, tyres, steering, road-holding, seat belts, air bags, ABS, crumple zones, stability systems • * Better roads and road surfaces, more motorways • * Slowing traffic growth, now falling for the first time since WW2 • * Better and quicker medical and other help at accidents and later • * Fewer pedestrians casualties as car ownership widens • * Falling reporting levels of non-fatal injuries (down 25% in recent years) • * and others.

16. There is no data in the Report prior to the 1999/00/01 numbers, the “baseline” level from which they assess reductions, to establish whether that period’s numbers were normal or abnormal. When asked for that data SRH replied: "The casualty data for 1987 to 1998 you have requested is pre Safer Roads Humber and not held by ourselves.  I have transferred your request to Humberside Police as they may hold the information“ I replied "That Safer Roads Humber, whose task is to reduce accidents over time, has not even bothered to obtain, let alone study, data prior to the 1999/00/01 site selection period the better to understand such trends, is not only significant but also utterly damning both of its competence and its integrity.”

17. Was it ever possible that the speed reductions claimed for the sites could ever have brought about the observed reductions in casualties in any case? In other words, how significant a contributory factor in accidents is speeding? Fortunately, since 2005 police Stats 19 data includes whether speeding was a "very likely" or "possible" factor, and the results have been quite consistent since then. And equally significant, by how much has speeding actually been reduced? The answer in both cases is “Not a lot”

18. DfT Table RAS50007 2011 Killed Seriously injured Contributory factor No % No % Road environment contributed 158 9 2,409 12 Vehicle defects 55 3 450 2 Injudicious action 498 28 4,604 23 Exceeding speed limit 242 14 1,378 7 Travelling too fast for conditions 226 13 1,759 9 Driver/rider error or reaction 1,18568 13,39566 Poor turn or manoeuvre 202 12 2,842 14 Failed to look properly 433 25 6,882 34 Failed to judge path or speed 200 11 3,186 16 Swerved 116 34 4,190 21 Impairment or distraction 426 24 3,152 15 Impaired by alcohol 166 9 1,386 7 Behaviour or inexperience 467 27 5,247 26 Careless, reckless or in 285 16 3,533 17 Pedestrian only 302 17 3,779 19 Total number 1,752 100 20,396 100

20. Now let's have a look at the speed reductions actually achieved by Safer Roads Humber’ cameras: Throughout the list of some 80 sites, speed reductions are in fact relatively trivial, amounting to only the odd 1 to 3 mph. That, incidentally, is why SRH choose to quote percentages, hoping that we will not notice that 9% of 35mph is only 3.2mph. Not not remotely enough to bring about even the modest casualty reductions that might theoretically be possible, let alone the wildly exaggerated claims of the Report. Look for example at line 5 (in red) where a (strangely precise) 53.11% reduction in KSI was apparently achieved by an increase in average speed from 44mph to 48mph, an increase in 85th percentile speed from 47mph to 56mph and a fall in the percentage of drivers exceeding the speed limit only from 83% to 81%! . Welcome to Fantasy Land!

22. Summary Most or all of the observed reduction at those sites would have happened anyway, without cameras, as it did across the 98% of roads across the country which have no cameras A major part of the reduction happened in 2002 before the cameras were in operation and could not, therefore have been due to them. After switch-on KSI hardly changed in 2003 or 2004. It is not credible that cameras, having achieved nothing for 16 to 21 months could then cause the steep fall of 2005 . Since 2005 the trend has been up, not down. It is impossible even if speeding were eliminated to bring about more than 5% or so in KSI, and that only on 2% of road length. Reductions in speed and speeding have been minimal and trivial And also - DfT values for accidents prevented are nonsense. see http://www.fightbackwithfacts.com/bogus-dft-values/

23. “Regression to the Mean” aka “Return to Normal” At camera sites selected for higher than normal KSI it is likely that (on average) casualty numbers will fall back to lower levels without intervention. We have seen that this happened across Humberside’s 63 core sites, but also Dave Finney of Slough has established that it happened across the whole of the Thames Valley police area, in both cases before their cameras were switched on. Given the importance of this effect a new analysis of regression to the mean has been done using police Stats19 data for 6 million injury accidents from 1985 to 2011 to see what did actually happen, 300,000 times, at 1km square locations (corresponding to camera sites) that had suffered at least 3 KSI in 3 years. The results are consistent across the country and very significant:

25. These graphs – there are hundreds of them for different police areas and qualifying periods – all confirm that the normal pattern of casualties at sites selected for higher than normal levels, in the great majority of cases without cameras, is that: Numbers follow national trends except in the 3 year selection period No group of sites that qualifies in any one selection period sees another such episode – because next time around, accidents being accidents they hppen somewhere else. Casualties revert to the normal trend in the first year after the selection period, and therefore normally before cameras would have been installed The size of the fall in the first year afterwards is determined by the rise at the start of the selection period, and clearly not by anything to do with cameras. Subsequent falls are due to long term trend The fall from the average of the selection period to the average of years 2, 3 and 4 afterwards is due largely to return to normal but also slightly to trend. Close to £2bn has been wasted over more than 12 years, pretending to bring about casualty reductions that would have happened anyway, without cameras.

26. For more than a decade a toxic combination of gross incompetence in planning, analysis and claims by the DfT, its Consultants, other advisers, vested interests and academics who really should have known better has wasted close to £2bn, penalised millions of safe drivers, cost tens of thousands their licenses and thousands their jobs, businesses and even marriages and not a few their lives. Now at last this new analysis confirms beyond rational argument what many critics have said from the very beginning, that it never was possible to reduce accidents to any statistically significant extent at sites, let alone across the country, by using speed cameras, and that accident reductions at camera sites are little different from what happens without cameras. Now at last this nonsense has to stop, now at last those who have perpetrated this fraud upon drivers and taxpayers, and who have consistently brushed off reasoned objections, must be called to account for what they have done.

27. And when they close down this insane and dangerous system, Parliament should take the opportunity to repeal Section 172 1998 Road Traffic Act that removes from drivers alone the right of silence that has been ours for centuries - and still is, for anyone suspected of any other offence including murder, terrorism, rape, arson, fraud and thousands more. The Privy Council decision in 2000 and the ECHR decision in 2007 that authorised the breach of this fundamental principle of our justice system did so primarily because of a perceived road safety interest in penalising drivers of speeding vehicles. Now that there clearly is no such public interest it is time to end this serious breach of our legal rights so that it becomes once again the responsibility of the authorities to prove their case, not the responsibility of the defendant to convict himself out of his own mouth.

28. With thanks for advice and assistance to many fellow realists about and campaigners against speed cameras, including particularly: Eric Bridgstock Ian Belchamber Dave Finney Brian Gregory Al Gullon Malcolm Heymer John Lambert All this information and a great deal more is available at on the fight back with facts web site. It and may be freely used and circulated to help bring to an end a scam which has already cost this country close to £2bn and made our roads more dangerous.

29. END