In October 2002, the Government issued a report on Road Traffic Speed, you can download it for free from here. You wont be surprised to know that speeding is deemed to be the main evil in accidents – even though this conflicts with every study yet conducted. They need to keep to the “party line” if they are to continue with the speed camera tax. I am not sure how long they will keep pushing the Speed Kills theme, as most of the public is against it and the media also now seems against it also.
The government continues to tell us that our roads are getting safer – due to speed cameras. Some of the statistics that they have used have been misleading – ie picking a small date range that shows a a decrease – but if you look outside the range over a longer period all of the government stats have been discredited. They took a further knock in July 2006 when Oxford University published its research into UK road accidents and showed that accidents had not been decreasing – just the definition of injury in an accident had been changed by the government and this had led to stats that showed lowering accident rates. I don’t suppose many readers will be surprised by the government fiddling the figures.
I dont think we will see a real reduction in accidents as the govt has invested 100’s millions in camera’s and has employed hundreds of people to operate them and never seems to admit it was wrong so people will go on being killed. I have yet to meet a police officer that thinks that speed cameras are a good idea. I have been doing what I can to make drivers safer and for the last 18 years I have been giving advanced driver training to help make people safer on the roads.
In 2001 we sponsored a survey to find out what the public thinks about the Govts approach to speeding.
In summary the survey shows:
89% of UK motorists do NOT agree with the Governments plans to introduce more speed cameras
Less than 7% of UK motorists say that they are being treated fairly by the Government
39% say the Government treats the motorist like a Cash Point
93% of UK motorists say the Government does not treat the motorist fairly
Only 0.17% believe that the Government treats the UK motorist Very Well – thats only 1.7 people in a 1,000
94% believe that the UK motorway speed limit should be increased