Big yellow speed cameras

Centurions said:
It absolutely isn't.

The biggest factor is lack of attention/experience/speed and lack of patience. The road environment is which includes the weather is way down any list you can find.

Personally, I think these are great if the educate at least some small proportion of the idiots on the road.
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You are of course correct that carelessness is the biggest factor but road crashes increase significantly during bad weather (perhaps because more drivers are careless in bad conditions) The point I was trying to make clumsily was that the positive affect of cameras has been exaggerated by the people who run the cameras. There is a huge problem with people tailgating and speeding and police numbers have been drastically cut so this is not being tackled. The person who told me this was a senior police officer so I have no reason to doubt him. My point about the risk of poor lighting and potholes remains.
 
Alan Harper's Tash said:
Aren’t speed cameras positioned where there have been a certain amount of accidents?

If it was all about revenue, there’d be loads on roads next to motorways where drivers are getting used to slower speeds and at the bottom of every steepish hill.
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They are positioned where that have been a certain number of incidents, but the incidents don't have to be speed related.
 
Kompany Car said:
Shame it also doesn’t do knobheads with modified exhausts. Or those who love throwing fast food wrappers and energy drink cans out of their windows.
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There has been a trial of cameras that do that. Will probably be rolled into other cameras like this one, as more sense to have one that does several things than several different cameras
 
East Level 2 said:
They are positioned where that have been a certain number of incidents, but the incidents don't have to be speed related.
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Sometimes cameras are placed where they get the most revenue (not the best safety benefit) and the police are not happy about this.

www.driving.co.uk

Driving | Life & Style

Expert reviews, news and insights on cars and motoring from The Times and The Sunday Times. Latest on vehicle models, driving tips, industry trends and road safety.
www.driving.co.uk 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.

www.express.co.uk

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 www.express.co.uk
 
bobbyowenquiff said:
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.
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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.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
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.
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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.
 
Alan Harper's Tash said:
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.
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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.

road-deaths-in-GB-1979-2019_201016_102035.jpg


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.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
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.

road-deaths-in-GB-1979-2019_201016_102035.jpg


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.
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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.
 
Alan Harper's Tash said:
Do smart motorways reduce speeding? .
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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...
 
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