--- Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 11:50:27 +1100 From: Tony Healy <thealy@private> Subject: Re: [Politech] New study says speed cameras don't work [priv] In-reply-to: <6.0.0.22.2.20031015083536.0210afa8@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Declan I have prepared a response to Alan Buckingham's study that claims speed cameras don't work. The main points are: 1. the crash types excluded from the speed category by Buckingham should not be excluded; they are caused or exacerbated by speeding and can be addressed by anti-speeding measures. Examples include jack-knifing, slippery roads and aggressive driving. So the proportion of crashes caused by speeding is not 7 percent as Buckingham claims, but the 30 to 40 percent claimed by road safety researchers. 2. crashes are biassed towards low speeds for many reasons, but this does not indicate that lawful travelling is more dangerous than speeding. For example, many crashes occur when vehicles are entering or leaving the traffic stream, and thus travelling slower than the stream or even stopped. 3. the plateauing in crash statistics that Buckingham comments on has several possible explanations, but Buckingham does not consider them. For example, they could result simply from education and advocacy programs having reached all reasonable drivers, and now being stalled on a hard core of speedsters. Or they might result from the effect of talking on mobile phones, which became prominent during the 1990's and which causes crashes. 4. the Australian experience clearly shows speed cameras reducing fatalities where they're installed. Crash reductions range from 46 percent to 95 percent over three year periods. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=839 Declan, please remove my email address if you use this message. Regards, Tony Healy _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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