Big yellow speed cameras

[normskih]

Nothing to do with safety just another money making racket - our civil liberties are eroded more every day. The amount of surveillance in this country is breathtaking.

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

They are positioned where that have been a certain number of incidents, but the incidents don't have to be speed related.

Sometimes cameras are placed where they get the most revenue (not the best safety benefit) and the police are not happy about this.

Speed cameras placed in areas to increase revenue rather than reduce accidents, says watchdog

A police watchdog has found that some speed cameras are being used as a means of making money rather than as a safety tool.

www.driving.co.uk

To make matters worse the money taken from camera speeding fines goes into a Consolidated Fund which the Government uses for general spending and none of this cash is ringfenced for road safety measures. The Government took £391m in camera revenue in the last five years at the same time as it was cutting the numbers of traffic police.
It is basically another form of taxation. I would have no problem with any of this if the money taken was used to boost road safety or even repair our crumbling roads.

Speed cameras rake in £391million from driving fines in five years

UK police, councils and transport authorities have spent £28.7million over five years maintaining the country's network of 3,328 fixed speed cameras and 807 average camera schemes, bringing in millions of pounds worth of profit.

www.express.co.uk

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Simple really, stick to the speed limit.

And if you can’t, most cars have cruise control these days and a sat nav telling you where the speed cameras are.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

If they cared about safety they would fix the streetlights, flood drains and potholes. A cyclist died near me after falling because of potholes. Cameras cut accidents at their locations but everywhere else cars speed and tailgate. Councils massage the stats. The biggest factor in road accidents is poor weather. It’s a scandal.

Even that's not necessarily true, because of regression to the mean. If you only put cameras where there have been an unusually high number of accidents, then a lot of those locations will have had a high number of accidents purely by chance. So whether you put a camera there or not, the chances of the number of accidents reducing are extremely high. But they put a camera there and think they've solved the problem. And then somewhere else will have a high number of accidents next year, they'll put another camera up, and it'll go down again. Meanwhile the total number of accidents on the roads are unchanged, because other than a select few locations (where the issue is often poor road layout), where people have accidents is aways going to be pretty random.

But yeah, politicians love an easy and cheap solution, and putting a camera up is much easier than comprehensively changing the roads to make them safer. In the Netherlands, for example, junctions now involve the cars go up to the level of the pavement and then back down again, rather than pedestrians having to drop down to the road. This forces drivers to slow down, and makes everything more accessible for pedestrians, cyclists, people with prams, wheelchair users, etc.

Having said that, catching people on their phones is a definite benefit if it can really do it.

 

[Blue Til Death]

Nothing to do with safety just another money making racket - our civil liberties are eroded more every day. The amount of surveillance in this country is breathtaking.

We are the most surveilled country on the planet by some considerable distance …!

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Even that's not necessarily true, because of regression to the mean. If you only put cameras where there have been an unusually high number of accidents, then a lot of those locations will have had a high number of accidents purely by chance. So whether you put a camera there or not, the chances of the number of accidents reducing are extremely high. But they put a camera there and think they've solved the problem. And then somewhere else will have a high number of accidents next year, they'll put another camera up, and it'll go down again. Meanwhile the total number of accidents on the roads are unchanged, because other than a select few locations (where the issue is often poor road layout), where people have accidents is aways going to be pretty random.

But yeah, politicians love an easy and cheap solution, and putting a camera up is much easier than comprehensively changing the roads to make them safer. In the Netherlands, for example, junctions now involve the cars go up to the level of the pavement and then back down again, rather than pedestrians having to drop down to the road. This forces drivers to slow down, and makes everything more accessible for pedestrians, cyclists, people with prams, wheelchair users, etc.

Having said that, catching people on their phones is a definite benefit if it can really do it.

Do smart motorways reduce speeding? If so, if all roads had cameras, people would probably speed less, wouldn’t they, as they’d get caught all the time.

 

[Tuearts right boot]

Best ever footage of bigfoot

Thought it was our resident moose fucker looking for firewood.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Do smart motorways reduce speeding? If so, if all roads had cameras, people would probably speed less, wouldn’t they, as they’d get caught all the time.

I don't know. I assume so. But the key question is always does it reduce accidents and deaths. Deaths went down pretty consistently until about 2009, but since then, they've basically plateaued, suggesting that all of these speed cameras aren't quite having the effects claimed.

Well all cars will probably be driverless someday soon, so it won't be an issue. I wonder what they'll find to make up their tax shortfalls then.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

I don't know. I assume so. But the key question is always does it reduce accidents and deaths. Deaths went down pretty consistently until about 2009, but since then, they've basically plateaued, suggesting that all of these speed cameras aren't quite having the effects claimed.

Well all cars will probably be driverless someday soon, so it won't be an issue. I wonder what they'll find to make up their tax shortfalls then.

Can’t own your own car and pay by the mile?

They'll find a way.

Interesting plateau. I guess there are some things you can’t stop. Human error comes in all sorts of forms.

 

[bluesince76]

Do smart motorways reduce speeding? .

Generally, yes, although you do get speed increases between the gantries. Ultimately, they'll go to average speed cameras, they just weren't available for changing speed limits previously.

Statistically, they're also safer than normal motorways (and definitely than high speed A roads) but they appear to be the engineering equivalent of us and FFP as far as the media are concerned...