Smaug.org.uk

Smaug.org.uk

A Reflection on UK Speed Cameras

Since 2001 the government has made a big deal about how its rules for the placement of all speed cameras will improve safety, and ensure that cameras are used fairly. But has anyone looked into whether these rules have really been implemented in the way Transport Minister John Speller guaranteed they would be?

Mr Speller made three distinct promises about all future speed cameras: that they would be highly visible, clearly signed, and located only on roads that are accident blackspots. However, even a little basic investigation reveals that it was all just spin.

Quite recently I witnessed the Hampshire Camera Partnership operating a mobile speed camera completely hidden behind a bush outside St Mary’s Hospital, and people have told me it operated there often. Since we all know the rules about where cameras can be, I assumed that if I reported this along with photos, the Camera Partnership would be reprimanded, and the speeding tickets cancelled. But after making some enquiries it seems that the ‘rules’, which everyone I know believes to be binding, are nothing more than guidelines, with little force at all. Even the guidelines suggest that 15% of speed cameras can be hidden.

As for the signing, routes where mobile cameras operate do not need signs unless the cameras operate there more than a certain amount of the time. In other places it’s not so much lack of signing as ‘crying wolf’. With signs almost everywhere, the signs provide practically no information at all, and might as well not be there.

But at least all cameras are correctly placed at real blackspots where they are needed, right? Unfortunately, no. The guidelines only specify that cameras should be located within a certain number of miles of recent accidents. This means that if someone hits a tree reversing out of their driveway, the accident can be used to justify a camera on any nearby dual carriageway or motorway. Worse yet, a suicide from a motorway bridge on the M1 was included by the Nottinghamshire partnership as a road casualty to justify a speed camera on that road.

What about the figures, which seem to show that cameras have massively reduced accidents? These calculations deliberately manipulate a known statistical error, apply to small lengths of road, and are open to cherry picking of favourable data. The reality is that deaths across Hampshire and the Island in 2001 at the start of the latest camera blitz were 69. In 2002 deaths rose to 96. In 2003 they rose again to 108.

The statistical error that is used to achieve apparent massive reductions relies on the fact that when the cameras are installed, it is usually after an unusually bad run of accidents near that spot. The next year, the accident rate will tend naturally to fall back towards its average value, even if no action is taken (regression to the mean.) To claim that cameras cause this regression is ludicrous to the point of being a lie.

Either the politicians are deliberately misleading the country, or they don’t realise what their own police and camera partnerships are up to. If you still think cameras have anything to do with safety or slowing people down, do a Google search for the name Stuart Harding.