ABD - Which?

The Association of British Drivers
Response to Article in Which?

The Which? article on speed cameras (October 2004) showed just how hard it is to consider the subject of speed cameras in depth, even in three pages. So many different people have an axe to grind, and passions run high.

However, there is one fact that should concentrate minds above all others — in 2003 fatalities were at their highest level since 1997 and almost 100 MORE people died than in 2002. Supporters of speed cameras are very surprised by this number, but the ABD isn't — we predicted this outcome from our inception in 1991. So it is unreasonable to describe our campaign for better, more effective road safety solutions as "extreme".

It simply isn't acceptable to break down this appalling loss of life into different road user groups or road types until a statistic is found that supports the current policies. There are 5000 cameras out there; they are all supposed to be in places where four people have been killed or seriously injured, and they are supposed to have reduced deaths in these locations by up to 70%. How can this position be defensible when deaths overall have increased?

If the national figures are not sufficient, lets indulge for a moment in our own breakdown of the figures. The example of Northamptonshire, HQ of the camera partnerships, whose camera scheme on the A428 was praised in the article, should be a lesson to all. In 2000, this county became one of the first camera partnerships allowed to keep money from fines — and the number of tickets issued rose from 4000 to 100,000 that year.

What did these prosecutions achieve? Nothing. Four years of deaths which were, on average, the same as they were before, and worse than in 1993-1996! Other early camera partnerships, such as Essex, Lincolnshire and Thames Valley, showed a relentless climb in fatalities.

These figures show that speed cameras aren't making any difference to road deaths.

But why?

PACTS claim that deaths fell in the 80s because seatbelts made it safer to crash, then stopped falling because everyone was wearing them. Wrong. Cars have continued to get safer, much safer. The DfT's own crash statistics show that a crash in a car built in 2000 is twice as survivable as a 1990 model. So deaths should have continued to fall as they did in the 70s and 80s, particularly with the great strides in critical care of accident victims which the BMA estimates are saving six to eight hundred lives a year.

Rod Kimber of the Transport Research Laboratory accuses the ABD of being unscientific, because we don't offer our own research for critical review.

His research supports slower speeds, he says. Strange how all his research was done AFTER the government had decided that "Speed Kills" was to be the main plank of its safety policy, not before. Stranger still, he claims that his own report analysing the causes of accidents is unreliable because the police first on the scene are such poor witnesses. Why, then, is he so keen to try to claim other causes of accidents as speed related in an attempt to add up to the "one third caused by speed" figure?

Perhaps strangest of all is the way that Kimber, in common with the camera partnerships, jealously guards the data on accidents, preventing people like the ABD from doing their own safety research. When he produces a report such as TRL 511 (one of the ones he mentions which claims that slower roads are safer), the raw data is not included. We are all expected to accept his interpretation of it as gospel. Interestingly, that particular report starts by stating that rural roads get safer the FASTER the speed of traffic. It is only when he splits them into un-auditable categories defined by himself that he manages to get the "right" result.

There are, of course, some places where speed cameras can make a positive contribution to road safety, and the ABD isn't entirely against them.

All that is happening is that cameras are being put in the wrong places safe stretches of road where the speed limit is too low. It isn't even true that cameras must be placed where speeding has caused four serious accidents. The cameras can be sited up to half a mile away from where the accidents happened, and must be placed where most traffic is breaking the speed limit. This is how cameras end up racking up thousands of pounds in fines from safe drivers and fail to tackle the few idiots who driver too fast in the real accident blackspots.

The most telling comment in the article came from environmentalist Harry Rutter, who admits that cameras are as much about social change as safety. Nobody in their right mind would claim that a pedestrian on a pavement separated from the road by a six foot grass verge would feel threatened by a driver doing the 36mph required to get a ticket instead of the 34mph which would not set the camera off. This is the reality of urban speed enforcement. But Rutter is trying to shift things around so that motor vehicles have to cede priority to every other type of road user, with the eventual aim of making car use as unpleasant as possible so that we will all get on the bus. As he says, "Cameras are part of that strategy." Not very good for roadspace consumers!

One of the key reasons for the failure to improve road safety during the 1990s is the abandonment of the roads programme that has resulted from this new transport ideology. During the 70s and 80s, new roads were built with proper junctions and facilities to separate pedestrians and cyclists from urban traffic. Now, cameras are used as an excuse a visible demonstration that the authorities are "doing something" about safety when in reality they are failing to make our roads safe. Now, there are pedestrian subways like the one on the A40 in West London being filled in so that yet another pelican crossing can be introduced to delay drivers who dare take their cars into London. One day, a child will be killed on that crossing I sincerely hope people will wake up to the truth before then.