Speed Cameras Still Don't Work
from the depends-on-how-you-define- dept
Speed camera watchdog Bob Dole writes "Remember the UK lady given a speed camera ticket for driving 480MPH? Or the person in Australia fined for driving 30MPH more than her car was capable? The government down under in embarrassment had to take their machines off line for several months to prove the devices were still capable of collecting millions in fines. With cameras disabled, injury accidents have dropped 34% and non-injury accidents declined by 14%, despite police claims that people were driving like madmen without them. To add insult to injury, secret testing found "the mobile cameras gave divergent readings in tests when they were moved to different locations or different times of the day." Oh, wait, I thought the camera never lied?" I guess it all depends on how you define "work." If you define it as collecting as many fines as possible, then perhaps they do work.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
More dangerous than the accidents they're supposed
Yeah, spped cameras are just to create revenue for cops and insurance companies, not for your safety.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
All their comparative statistics are between one whole year with camera, and 10 months out of which five where with camera.
No comparison between with/without camera on the same months of the year. Which is surprising considering they probably had those.
Even for what they do have, 243 crashes on the year with cameras, and 208 crashes for 10 months partially without camera. Estimate the 208 for a whole year 208*1.2=249.6... So based on that they expect slightly more accidents to occur this year without the cameras...
And on this the reporter claims that "the number of crashes is also lower this year" ??
How about injury-causing accidents alone? 70 in 2002 with cameras, 91 in 2003 with cameras, 60 this year, which based on the same rough estimate means 60*1.2=72 ... Hmmm.
Getting from this that speed cameras increase likelyhood of accidents is quite far fetched.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: No Subject Given
"The police figures compare Ring Road crash and injury statistics from 2002 and 2003 with data from the first 10 months of this year. Between January and the end of October, there were 60 crashes causing injury on the Ring Road. The year before, there were 91 injury-causing crashes and 70 in 2002." Link
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
No, Bob. At least not according to the article.
Cameras stopped working at May. But the report is of the first 10 months of this year, Jan to Oct. That's the months before May + The months after May.
And they specifically say 10 months of this year, but do not specify time for previous years leaving it as a general "from 200X", strongly suggesting that it's a whole-year number. Read the sentence you yourself quoted as an example.
Maybe the article got it wrong. Do you know anything about this from another source? According to this articles alone, it's definitly apples to cucumbers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
Found an even better part to make my point "The number of crashes is also lower this year - 208 for the 10 months to October, as opposed to 243 for all of last year"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
They do work
1) They do reduce accidents - my partner sees that statistics and knows about this stuff.
2) At least in the UK, all the money generate by speed camera fines *MUST BE PUT BACK INTO ROAD SAFETY MEASURES* - there is no revenue stream for anyone except the road safety people.
[ link to this | view in thread ]