spindrift said:
All published evidence shows that speed cameras, even allowing for
RTTM, have a worthwhile positive effect.
All that published and paid for by the DfT, maybe, and then only just,
and only in the immediate vicinity of the devices. Interesting too how,
year-on-year, the claims made for cameras have become more modest. The
most recent report on the effect of cameras in the "partnerships", blew
most of the historical reasons for their widespread adoption out of the
window (as predicted years ago by a certain road safety group), albeit
hidden in an appendix and largely unreported.
What isn't clear, and what hasn't been widely investigated, is the
overall impact of speed cameras on road safety, and on the migration of
"accidents". What we do know is that as camera numbers have increased,
the general downward trend in KSIs has diminished.
One piece of research which may have thrown some light on the broader
influence of the cameras, described by the DfT as required for
"understanding the mechanisms of change in accident occurrence and speed
behaviour brought about by speed enforcement by cameras", was cancelled
by the DfT. Some have suggested that it was cancelled following the
revelations in that infamous "Appendix H", which almost certainly also
led to the watering-down of the "partnerships", and the removal of the
"camera" from its pedestal in December 2005, for fear that its findings
were likely to have damned the ways camera were justified and used, and
would have exposed the dire consequences that they have been responsible
for.
--
Matt B