“Safety” Cameras?

In an interesting article in today’s Telegraph Paul Smith from SafeSpeed discusses speed cameras (euphemistically referred to as “safety” cameras) and why they don’t seem to be saving lives as their proponents claim.

British road safety is in trouble. The number of road deaths isn’t falling as expected and recent figures from Europe put our rate of road safety improvement behind 20 other European nations. We used to have the safest roads in the world but we have been overtaken.

Although it appears that Department for Transport (DfT) targets are being met, it’s only the trend in serious injuries that provides this positive result. Unfortunately for the DfT, and for the rest of us, the numbers being hospitalised following road crashes haven’t fallen for a decade. The only reasonable conclusion is that serious injuries are not falling either, but DfT statistics suffer an increasing degree of under-reporting.

When asked to investigate why road deaths were not falling as expected, the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) deduced that “some drivers must be getting worse”.

That last paragraph tends to be the nub of the argument. I have mentioned before that there is more to road safety than reducing the speed at which people travel. Yes, indeed, the physical laws relating to moving objects do support the assertion that reducing speed will reduce the consequence of collisions and in some cases may mean that the collision does not happen. But… But… driving – and roadcraft – is a much more complex matter than merely the laws of moving objects. It is all about hazard recognition and management of risk in a dynamic environment and it is this aspect that Smith concentrates upon:

I have spent the last six years looking at road safety as a system and I’m pretty sure I know what’s going wrong. Modern traffic policies are making drivers worse. This has been allowed to happen because the DfT has no working definition of what it means to be a good driver or even a proper understanding of what drivers really do. Yet driver behaviour, specifically the quality of driver behaviour, is the hidden fundamental on which all road safety depends. Unfortunately, the DfT has been taking driver quality for granted or possibly ignoring it altogether, an issue that Sir John Whitmore addressed in his most recent Telegraph Motoring column (June 2).

The process of driving is one of real-time risk management. Drivers who manage risk well stay out of trouble. They recognise risky situations and wait, hang back or steer clear.

Indeed, that is what I used to teach learner drivers; weigh up the situation and drop back rather than get involved. One instructor I used to know referred to the tendency to rush in as SIDS – self induced distress syndrome – and he had a point. Dropping back and letting the situation sort itself out without becoming involved adds little if any time to the overall journey and can make the difference between finishing at the desired destination or in the morgue. It also makes the difference between a relaxed journey and one fraught with stress. So, to those who campaign for lower speeds and for ever more cameras to enforce those lower limits; yes, lower speed applied at the right time is a solution. However, it is the driver who is aware of the risks and evaluates them effectively who makes the best use of that approach. A bad driver remains a bad driver at whatever speed he is travelling and will be unable to effectively regulate speed according to risk. That is  point that Smith is making here:

It’s not so much what we see that matters, but what we do with what we see. We use it to manage risk.

However:

Sadly, most people haven’t been taught to drive as risk managers. We are taught manual skills (steering, clutch control, gear changing) and rules (go this way or that, stop here, don’t stop here, don’t speed, don’t drink and drive).

I dispute this. When teaching people to drive motor cars and ride motorcycles, effective risk management was a part of the package that I delivered. We didn’t necessary call it that; terms such as “the system” and “roadcraft” or “effective observation” were used – but it amounts to the same thing; evaluate the risk and manage one’s approach to it; right gear, right speed, right road position and informing other road users of one’s intentions. I have never met a driving or riding instructor who does not take this approach. Learners are taught risk management. The problem is that their initial learning is a fairly condensed period at the beginning of their driving career and once on their own, there is a temptation to forget. There is no subsequent encouragement for drivers to improve or develop their skills – how many people are aware of the passplus scheme and how large a proportion of new drivers take it up? Combine this lack of continuous development with inane “speed kills” propaganda and is it any wonder driving is being dumbed down?

In particular, we learn to adjust our speed in order to remain safe in the prevailing road, weather and traffic conditions. The speed at which you choose to drive is an output from your own internal risk management system. Yet the DfT regards speed as an “input”.

This echoes what I have just said – the driver regulates speed according to the situation. The constant barrage of speed limits (many of which appear to have little to do with prevailing risk) is clearly not helping. Nor for that matter do increasingly stupid “traffic management” schemes, traffic lights on roundabouts, a plethroa of road signs and traffic calming measures.

Not only do they neglect driver quality, but they are actively making us worse. We are prioritising and concentrating on the wrong things. At the heart of our policies are speed cameras, which have largely replaced comprehensive traffic policing. The dream is that cameras reduce risk, but the reality is that they are reducing the quality of our risk management.

Smith has a point here, but there is another aspect to consider. If we accept that speed limits are appropriate – and I do accept this, I merely question the risk assessment that took place with many of them – then enforcement is a reasonable consequence. Again, I have no beef with enforcement. I have always argued that a traffic police officer will make an overall judgement based upon the conditions. In other words, the traffic cop is making the same evaluation of risk as the speeding driver. This may make the difference between a prosecution and a caution. Generally, I would prefer this approach. However, there is a dark side. I was recently reading about people’s experience with this in Motorcycle Rider (a publication to which I occasionally contribute). On these occasions, the police issued prosecution notices when the rider either was not speeding or was well under the speed claimed by the police. On one such occasion, the magistrates dismissed the case because the police officer was proved to have lied. Whatever their faults, a camera will not lie about the speed (at least, I’ve not come across any that have). And, frankly, if you get caught by one, given that they are clearly visible, I might just start asking questions about your observation and hazard recognition skills.

Cameras give us legal compliance targets, not safety targets.

That rather sums up the two-dimensional thinking of this government. They have taken the same trite mentality to health and education with the same piss-poor results.

The only possible route forward is for the DfT to admit its fatal mistake and pull the plug on the failed speed camera programme. This would certainly be a dramatic step, but it is an essential one, as a mere change of emphasis would leave the false dogma intact.

Time to get those pigs fed and out of the hanger, methinks. Much as I agree with Smith’s rationale – as it is one I share – given that the speed camera mentality is burgeoning across continental Europe as well as here, I’m afraid that they are here to stay. Petitions such as the one he is publicising don’t work. When was the last time politicians changed policy on the back of a petition? And given that the anti-car mob currently have the ear of the current administration as do the rest of the enviroloon lobby, the likelihood of SafeSpeed getting speed cameras scrapped is as likely as me getting those pigs scrambled…

Nice idea, though.