Transcript cost lives Safe Speed presents... Why 1

Safe Speed presents...
Why and how speed cameras
cost lives
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Section 1
• What is happening on our roads?
• Why is this happening?
• How do we fix it?
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Our road safety disaster
• Since 1993, we have lost a 50 year
beneficial trend in fatal accidents.
• Road deaths are “stuck” at over 3,400.
• But projections of pre-1993 trends lead
to present road death estimates of
1,800 to 2,200 per annum
• Over 5,500 people have died on our
roads to date due to this loss of trend
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What changed in 1993?
• We began to base our national road
safety policy on “speed kills”, backed by
speed cameras.
• We also ran national campaigns about
the dangers of speeding
• And the Police began to leave the
safety of the roads to “PC Gatso”
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Is this happening worldwide?
• No. We have noted that many countries
continue to show road safety
improvements at the previous rate.
• Germany, France and Italy for example
have clear ongoing improvements
• Sweden and Australia are showing a
similar loss of trend to ours
• These effects demand proper scientific
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study
A system supported by lies
• It isn’t true that speed causes many
accidents (Only about 5%)
• It isn’t true that slowing traffic alone will
reduce the number of accidents
• Claims of accident reductions at speed
camera sites are normally due to
statistical errors.
• The lies are generally mistaken beliefs
based on over-simplification
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Faith and facts
• It’s easy to believe that “speed kills”
• Flawed and limited research appears to
support the idea
• The modern road safety establishment
tends to accept the flawed research
• But looking just a little deeper reveals
no supporting substantial facts
• “Speed kills” is a matter of faith not fact
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Speed
• Speed is easy to measure
• But we’re not measuring the right sort of
speed (more on that later!)
• The attraction of easy measurement
and the hope of a road safety quick fix
is deluding a generation
• But after a decade of speed limit
reductions and ever-increasing speed
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enforcement the results are awful
Information control
• The road safety information from the
DfT and the so-called safety camera
partnerships is very tightly controlled to
make the modern road safety policy
sound reasonable and successful
• It’s highly immoral and dangerous to
feed false road safety information to the
public
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Section 2
• What is happening on our roads?
• Why is this happening?
• How do we fix it?
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Does speed kill?
• Of course it does. The faster you go the
harder you crash, and the less time you
have to avoid a crash.
• Of course it doesn’t. The most careful
analysis of UK road safety shows a very
limited connection between speeding
and accidents.
• What’s the reason for this conflict?
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Speed kills?
• There is much confusion over the exact
meaning of the word “speed”
• It is true that inappropriate speed for the
conditions is extremely dangerous
• It isn’t true that exceeding a speed limit
in itself is dangerous
• “Speed” can still kill just as effectively
with high degrees of speed limit
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enforcement
Is faster more dangerous?
• In the real world faster roads are safer.
• Most accidents take place in town on
30mph roads
• Our Motorways are the fastest roads
and also by far the safest.
• Faster roads are safer is true as a
sound general principle
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Excessive Speed Accidents
• Gross examples are not generally
caused by “normal motorists”
• Most are probably entirely within the
speed limit anyway
• No degree of speed limit enforcement
will prevent all of them
• In fact very few are potentially within
reach of speed enforcement
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Dangerous Speeders?
• Joyriders in stolen cars, drunks, police
drivers on call and reckless drivers are
not normally curtailed by speed
enforcement
• Normal responsible motorists a few
miles per hour over the speed limit are
rarely dangerous
• Reckless behaviors sometimes mislead
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us about the dangers of speeding
Speed limits and Speed
enforcement
• Are both good… We need them
• But we do not need high levels of speed
enforcement directed at purely technical
infringements
• Worthwhile speed enforcement must be
targeted at safety infringements
• Has greatest effect on open roads away
from hazards - exactly where it’s
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needed least
Real accident causes
• The vast majority of accidents are
caused by road user error
• A small but important proportion of
accidents are caused by road user
violations
• The vast majority of road user errors
that cause accidents are carelessness,
inattention or misjudgement
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Carelessness and Inattention
• Cause probably 75% of all road
accidents
• And probably 30 million near misses
each year - (but only 2 million accidents
and only about 2,000 fatalities)
• We should be very afraid of those 30
million near misses - the wrong policy
could turn some of them into dangerous
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accidents very easily
Driver attention
• Tiny changes in average driver attention
can make accidents out of near misses
• “Speed kills” road safety policy is
making quite large changes in the
things that drivers pay attention to
• We should not be surprised that fear of
speed enforcement is causing lower
average driver attention to important
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safety factors
Driver’s safety priorities
• Experience teaches drivers to pay
greatest attention to the most important
safety factors
• High levels of speed enforcement force
drivers to give quite high attention to a
fairly low safety priority
• Too many drivers are now paying
attention to speed limit compliance
while an unseen dangerous situation
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develops ahead
Speed matters
• The more we tell road users of the
importance of speed limit compliance,
the more they respond by treating it as
an important safety factor
• But keeping to the speed limit will not
ensure that you can stop in time
• We need “safe speed behaviour”
instead
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Safe speed behaviour
• A safe speed is one that always allows
a driver to stop within the distance that
he knows to be clear
• Keeping to a speed limit is no substitute
• You could drive safely for years without
having a working speedo, but wouldn’t
last a minute with a blacked out
windscreen!
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Too much speed enforcement
• Criminalises safe drivers causing
injustice
• Increases road dangers by distracting
drivers and distorting their safety
priorities
• Drives a wedge between Police and
public
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Section 3
• What is happening on our roads?
• Why is this happening?
• How do we fix it?
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International Fatality Rates
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There is an alternative
• There are vast differences in road
safety performance between countries
• The average UK driver is a very long
way from the ideal
• Road safety performance is a
consequence of culture
• Better safety culture leads to safer
roads
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The three “E”s of road safety
• Engineering, Enforcement and
Education
• Recently we’ve had poor enforcement too much dumb speed limit
enforcement, and not enough intelligent
Police enforcement
• We’re missing out on the benefits of
education - we could be doing so much
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more
Enforcement
• There are dangerous behaviours on our
roads that the police must deal with
• But Police traffic strength is thought to
have reduced from about 15% in 1993
to about 6% now
• That makes it all the more important
that they must apply their efforts to real
dangers and not technical offences
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Engineering
• Real and constant gains in road safety
come from vehicle safety advances and
road engineering improvements.
• These are big gains which are providing
an ongoing benefit worth at least 5%
per annum
• Traffic increases annually by about
2.5%. It’s not enough to fully offset the
gains from engineering improvements. 30
Education
• Another classic way to improve road
safety is through road user education
• It’s proven to work to reduce accidents
• But we’re hardly doing it
• There’s huge scope for improvement
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The fourth E: Encouragement
• Ask any modern manager how to
improve the performance of his team,
and he’ll tell you they need
encouragement and incentives
• It’s the same with our drivers. We can
improve their performance with
encouragement and reward.
• Such schemes have proved effective in
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commercial vehicle fleets
Improvements in drivers
• A culture which encourages higher
standards
• Incentives for improvement
• Educate to prevent repeating mistakes
• Build on existing strengths
• The average UK driver is at a very low
standard compared with the ideal
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What are our strengths?
• We take driving seriously - both
nationally and as individuals
• We have the safest roads in the world
• We have had the benefit of a centre of
driving excellence
• We have defined and proved excellent
core values for real road safety
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What are the core values?
• Individual responsibility
• Care and consideration for other road
users
• Courtesy
• Patience
• We must build on these core values to
create an improved safety culture
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Building a safety culture
• We’ve already earned the safest roads
in the world years before we had speed
cameras
• We can use the same principles to give
equal improvements over the next few
decades
• Modern thinking in health and safety
can help us to do even better
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But...
• Speed cameras will have to go
• They are dangerous, distracting and
misleading
• They don’t measure important safety
violations, they only measure technical
infringements
• And they don’t detect drunks, reckless
drivers, stolen cars or bald tyres (to
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name a few!)
Conclusions
• Too many speed cameras are actually
making our roads more dangerous
• “Speed kills” road safety policy is based
on lies and mistakes
• There is an alternative based on a
proven approach
• We must get back on track as soon as
possible
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You can’t measure safe
driving in miles per hour
Visit
http://www.safespeed.org.uk
for more information
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Regression to the mean
• There’s a new cure for the ‘flu
• All you have to do is clap your hands
every day that you’re sick
• Virtually everyone who tried it got better
• Therefore we know it’s 100% effective
• In road safety, “regression to the mean”
often leads to illusions of benefit from a
safety treatment.
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Regression to the mean
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