On 22 Apr 2005 16:36:31 GMT, Ian Johnston was popularly supposed to have said:
You're missing the point entirely.
Most of the time, people regulate speed by working on how fast the world is going past; by vision as they look out of the windscreen.
But, where there's a speed camera about, you either go much slower than the speed limit and miraculously acquire a moron driver a few microns off the back bumper, or you keep a close watch on the speedo to make sure you don't get a ticket.
Keeping a watch on the speedo, a much closer watch than is normally the case, means you're not watching the road.
Most of the time, that doesn't matter. A vanishingly small but finite amount of the time, something'll happen that you'd see and avoid if you were not watching the speedo to avoid a ticket.
So, you have to balance slowing people down strategically with at the same time forcing people to watch the speedo like hawks, and all the other ills that speed cameras impose.
You also have a much more insidious evil buttociated with speed cameras. Safety Camera Partnerships are dedicated to just one enforcement measure for cutting KSI figures, which is to say sticking speed traps all over the place. To do this they cheat and manipulate the figures to keep themselves in business; were they honest many would be out of a job.
So, local authorities are bamboozled into using speed cameras as almost the only traffic enforcement system, whereas even the government's presumably highly mbuttaged figures conclusively show that speed is a cause or major contributory factor in only 15 to 20% of accidents.
In other words, safety camera partnerships at the absolute, extreme peak of their performance, if they were 100% successful in eliminating all speeding, would only achieve at most a 20% drop in accidents.
That leaves 80% untouched.
Pretty bloody awful enforcement measure, I call that. Most inefficient.
-- By caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, By the beans of Java do thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning, By caffeine alone do I set my mind in motion
