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• Urgent Action from Transport 2000

• Activists' briefings: Speed and road safety

• Ten reasons why people should cut their driving speed

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Urgent Action from Transport 2000

The Sun is running a campaign called "make 'em glow, we'll go slow" campaign, referring to speed cameras. They are encouraging readers to write in with the location of "hidden" cameras and they then campaign to have the speed camera made obvious. They say that as a result of their campaign, the National Safety Camera partnership team are going to "launch a probe" into the use of hidden cameras. They say that some police authorities are still using cameras to raise money.

In addition, today the Sun are featuring MAD - Motorists Against Detection - who apparently are "responsible people and generally law-abiding citizens" but who claim to have sabotaged up to 600 speed cameras, especially in Norfolk, Devon, Scotland and Wales. They target cameras that are not outside schools or at accident blackspots and which therefore must just be for revenue-purposes, according to "Captain Gatso". The story is also featured in The Mirror today. MAD are apparently also destroying congestion charging cameras too.

• It would be good to get some short and succinct letters into the editors of these rags in response. Points to make might include:
• cameras save lives - they have been shown to reduce deaths and serious injuries at camera sites by 35%
• abiding by speed limits is a key part of the responsibility of owning a driving licence; hidden cameras should not bother law-abiding motorists
• 3,450 people were killed on British roads last year - excessive or inappropriate speed is the biggest factor in causing death on the road
• car users make up half the number of people who die on British roads; MAD are endangering themselves as well as the people around them by destroying cameras

Below is the T2000 myths and facts note on speed and road safety - with further facts and figures.

You can write into the papers as follows:

Sun: letters@the-sun.co.uk

Mirror: mailbox@mirror.co.uk

Thanks for your help.

Vicky Cann

Activists' briefings: Speed and road safety

How to counter common motoring myths

Myth: "Safety cameras are cash-cows for the Government, in effect a stealth tax, especially when they are used on motorways or dual carriageways outside towns or villages."

Fact: In the year 2000 over 1 million fixed penalty tickets were issued and the estimated revenue from them was about £44.3 million. There were also 139,200 fines from court proceedings for speeding worth about £18

million. The total fines for speeding for the year 2000 were therefore about £62.8 million. For comparison, the receipts of the Inland Revenue for the 1999-2000 tax year amounted to £148,860 million. Clearly, fines for speeding are insignificant in comparison with general taxation. Furthermore, not all fines are collected and no account is taken of safety camera running costs.

It is misleading to call fines for breaking the law 'taxes', as law abiding citizens don't have to pay them. Furthermore, safety cameras operating within 'safety camera partnership' areas, which now cover most of the country, will have their fines used to pay for the installation and running costs of the cameras. Overall safety cameras save us money. The Government estimates that each person killed on the road costs over £1 million in pain and suffering, lost output, hospital costs, police costs and damage to property.

Myth: "Safety cameras don't save lives. Quite the opposite: when motorists see the cameras they suddenly brake hard, which is dangerous."

Fact: Motorists should be driving within the speed limits so there is no need to brake hard at safety cameras if the law is being observed. Skilled drivers do not drive above the limit: they know the law and the consequences of car crashes. About half the people hit by a vehicle travelling at 30mph will die; hit at 40mph, nine out of ten will die.

Speed limits are intended to provide a safe road environment for all road-users including other motorists. A recent Government study of pilot safety cameras sites found that on average there were 47 per cent fewer people killed and seriously injured at the sites. For Northamptonshire alone, this means 105 fewer people were killed and seriously injured on the county's roads in the first year of the safety camera scheme than in the previous year.

Myth: "The use of safety cameras means there are fewer traffic police. When there were traffic police, they would catch real criminals speeding not unlucky motorists."

Fact: Traffic policing became less of a priority when the Government removed it as a core duty for the police. There is a need for greater traffic policing and it can be useful in catching criminals who are also breaking the law by speeding. Drivers who break the law by speeding are usually fined and penalty points are added to their licence. Generally, a motorist would have to be caught speeding four times before losing his or her licence, so there's plenty of warning. Speeding is not a 'victimless crime'.

Myth: "Speed doesn't cause accidents. There are more important contributing factors to crashes like drunkenness, tiredness or just plain boredom at driving slowly."

Fact: Speeding is not only unlawful but irresponsible and threatens other motorists and road users who want to travel safely. Government advice is that drivers need to take regular breaks to avoid tiredness, and drink-driving is illegal and dangerous. Many drivers don't realise that speed is responsible for more deaths than drink-driving.

In the year 2000, 66 per cent of drivers exceeded the 30mph speed limit in urban areas. In 2001, 3450 people lost their lives on our roads: a third of these fatal crashes were due to excessive speed and 218 of the dead were children.

Myth: "Statistics show that counties with many safety cameras have no better accident figures than those with a few."

Fact: There are many factors that contribute to crashes and comparing one county with another may not be particularly meaningful. It is, however, meaningful to compare the crash figures for a particular site before and after the installation of safety cameras. Government figures show that more than 800 separate before-and-after speed surveys at over 100 camera sites "demonstrate that cameras do reduce speed and a consequential reduction in casualties should be expected".

Myth: "Research by the Government-funded Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), an internationally recognised research establishment, shows that speed is a factor in only 7 per cent of accidents, not a third as some claim."

Fact: There has been much misquoting of the Transport Research Laboratory's (TRL's) findings, particularly one of its reports, No. 323. TRL recently wrote: "Speed increases the impact of many factors which contribute to accidents. For example, 'aggressive driving' or 'driving too closely' are both much worse at speed... Misunderstandings in the press appear to have resulted in two ways. First, speed identified as a separate factor in its own right was present in 15 per cent of accidents, not 7.3 per cent, or lower figures that are often misquoted. Second, the 15 per cent is only one part of the total effect of speed on accidents. When allowance is made for all the other speed-dependent factors, the contribution is, we believe, much greater." Marie Taylor, Group Manager of research into speed and accidents at TRL, said of their numerous studies over the past decade into the relationship between speed and crashes that: "The results from each of the studies show unambiguously that higher speeds are associated with more accidents." The research at TRL has found that "excessive speed was recorded as a factor in more than a third of fatal accidents" and that "the true effect of speed is likely to be even greater than this".

Myth: "The public don't want safety cameras and most people break the speed limits."

Fact: Many people want their neighbourhood to be places free of danger from speeding traffic. In the safety camera partnerships, requests from the public for safety cameras to be introduced in their areas "substantially exceeded the number of complaints about their operation". An AA-commissioned survey showed 44 per cent believed that there should be more spending on Government campaigns for slower speeds in towns.

A MORI poll of 2000 drivers' opinions of speed cameras revealed that seven out of ten drivers already accept that well-placed cameras are a useful way of reducing crashes and saving lives, while 80 per cent of drivers do not believe that cameras are an infringement on people's civil liberties.

Myth: "Safety cameras should be brightly painted and not hidden. If cameras are meant to reduce speeds then they should be highly visible so drivers slow down."

Fact: The Government's decision to paint safety cameras brightly was apparently an arbitrary decision taken without supporting research. Indeed, research undertaken in New Zealand between mid-1997 and mid-2000 compared the relative effectiveness of hidden versus visible safety cameras. Perhaps not unexpectedly it found that hidden cameras caught about four times as many speeding vehicles. However, it also found that when cameras were hidden there was less speeding in areas away from the immediate camera area, ie speed reduction occurred over a larger part of the road network when cameras were hidden. In addition, after ten years of intensified speed enforcement, the Victoria Project in Australia has switched to highly covert operations. This was because drivers were only complying with speed limits in the presence of cameras. In all other locations speeding continued to be a problem.

Myth: "Speed limits are a one-size-fits-all approach which isn't suited to individual roads. Good drivers can judge what the appropriate speed for individual circumstances."

Fact: Speed limits are maximum speeds and in some circumstances driving near those speeds is reckless. Other road users don't expect to have additional risks of speeding vehicles imposed upon them without their consent. If drivers wish to drive at speed then motor sports offer these opportunities away from the public highway. Generally speaking, a 1mph reduction in traffic speed results in an average 5 per cent reduction in crashes.

Myth: "Safety cameras are often wrongly sited; in fact, often the safest roads have cameras, not the most dangerous."

Fact: Some commentators seem to have missed the point: safety cameras make roads safer. If roads are safer with safety cameras this is a testament to the value and effectiveness of safety cameras. Furthermore, Government guidelines for the safety camera partnerships require four deaths or serious injuries at a site for a safety camera to be installed.

Ten reasons why people should cut their driving speed

1. Excessive or inappropriate speed is a major cause of road crashes. A 1mph increase in average speed has been shown to result in an average 5 per cent increase in crashes. Even if one takes the very conservative view that a third of crashes are caused by speed, this still means that in 2001 at least 1150 people were killed and 12,370 people were seriously injured in road crashes where speed was a contributory factor. Proportionally, this would translate into 275 pedestrian deaths, of which 35 were children, and 46 cyclist deaths in 2001 in crashes involving speed. Lower speeds reduce both the frequency of collisions and their severity. Hull City Council's widespread 20mph zones have resulted in a 38.5 per cent reduction in child casualties, clearly showing a very strong link between speed reduction and casualty reduction. Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) says that a reduction of 2mph in the average speed on the road network would save 200 lives a year.
2. More fuel is burnt at higher speeds, resulting in more air pollution and impacting on health. Driving at 50mph instead of 70mph can reduce fuel consumption by 30 per cent. As speed increases above 30mph it results in an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The Government is committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent of 1990 levels by 2010, and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommends a 60 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Emissions from transport are currently the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases in the UK. Road traffic is the single largest source of air pollution. As many as 24,100 deaths each year are exacerbated by air pollution.
3. Driving fast creates more traffic noise. Road traffic is the most important source of noise nuisance and tyre noise increases with speed. Road traffic noise is known to cause stress, poor sleep and mild psychiatric illness.
4. Fast moving traffic severs communities. Busy roads can divide local communities, literally cutting them in half. Children and elderly people are especially affected. The faster the traffic is moving, the harder it is to cross the road, increasing the risk to the pedestrian. Many elderly and disabled people literally do not have the mobility to cross roads fast enough between breaks in traffic and so are cut off. CPRE research has shown that 83 per cent of authorities have no comprehensive strategy to introduce 30mph speed limits in villages. Many village high streets and through roads still have 40 or 60mph speed limits. With these kinds of speeds it is virtually impossible to cross the road without controlled crossing.
5. High traffic speeds suppress cycling and walking. A MORI poll found that 44 per cent of people said they would cycle more if roads were safer and 26 per cent would travel less by car if the conditions for walking locally were better. High traffic speed not only intimidates cyclists and pedestrians, but the higher the speed, the greater the severity of injury on impact. If a cyclist or pedestrian is hit by a vehicle travelling at 40mph, they only have a 15 per cent chance of survival; if hit at 20mph they have a 95 per cent chance of survival. Cyclists' and pedestrians' fears about speed and road safety are based on a reality that Britain has one of the proportionally worst track records for cyclist and pedestrian fatality levels in Europe.
6. Speeding traffic reduces the mobility of children. Children want to be able to play in the areas near to where they live, to walk or cycle to school, to be able to walk round to their friend's house, but parents' fears about speeding traffic and road safety prevent children being independently mobile. Parents' fears are not irrational: in Britain in 2000 the police reported 3000 serious child pedestrian casualties. Research has shown that fear of traffic, and of speeding traffic in particular, leads parents to drive their children to school. In the past 20 years car journeys to school have doubled and studies have shown that children's free time is becoming increasingly sedentary. These low levels of activity (and poor diets) are leading to rising rates of obesity in British children with the associated risk of coronary heart disease in later life. Children's independent mobility is important for health, social development and forming self-reliance.
7. Speeding traffic and rat-running through residential areas reduces quality of life and inhibits a sense of community. Many of our streets now feel like people-free zones. People walk 20 per cent less and cycle 25 per cent less than 20 years ago, while playing in the street, sitting and chatting to neighbours and other social activities have clearly also decreased. Less street activity means neighbours are less likely to know each other, reducing the overall sense of community and all the benefits of social support. Fear of crime increases as street activity falls.
8. Speeding road traffic disproportionately affects people in deprived communities. The Social Exclusion Unit's interim report Transport and Social Exclusion stated that deprived communities are more affected by pedestrian casualties and pollution caused by road traffic than richer communities. Children from the 10 per cent most deprived wards in England are three times more likely to be hit by a car as a pedestrian.
9. Road crashes caused by speed cost at least £5 billion a year. The DETR estimated the value of preventing all road crashes and casualties at £16.3 billion for 1999; preventing even a third of these crashes would bring an economic cost benefit of £5 billion a year. Hull City Council's programme of 20mph zones has cost approximately £4 million to implement. However, the savings in terms of injury costs have been estimated at £40 million, meaning Hull's programme has paid for itself ten times over.
10. Slower speeds improve the capacity of the road to carry more vehicles. The capacity of the road network is increased when drivers approach roundabouts and junctions slowly and smoothly resulting in a more continuous flow of traffic and greater through-flow. Reduced speeds also result in reduced crashes. Road crashes are a major reason for congestion, preventing traffic flowing. More research is needed to determine the cost: benefit of slower speeds in terms of journey time.

Vicky Cann
Assistant Director (Policy & Campaigns)
Transport 2000
The Impact Centre
12-18 Hoxton Street
London N1 6NG
(t) 020 7613 0743 x107
(f) 020 7613 5280
www.transport2000.org.uk