More haste, less safe on
the roads
From 6pr.com.au
By Paul Murray
October 25, 2003
The last time I
looked, speeding wasn't one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
But the way it is treated in
WA these days, you'd think it had been specifically proscribed in
the Ten Commandments.
We're brainwashed by the slogan
Speed Kills. The problem is that it's a lie.
The facts speak for themselves.
Last year, the WA police speed-checked drivers 19.5 million times
and made 3.22 million pinches for exceeding the limit.
The road toll last year was
around 240. If speed killed - as we're constantly told - the road
toll would be a lot higher given the amount of speeding going on.
Speed, of itself, doesn't kill.
If it did, we would be required to stay perfectly still at all times.
Next week, a British academic
will fly in from Bath Spa University College in England to debunk
the Speed Kills myth for the Sydney-based Centre for Independent Studies.
Sociologist Dr Alan Buckingham
says the strategy is flawed and based on what he calls "flaky"
evidence.
In fact, he argues that speed
cameras merely punish the best, safest drivers.
"The net result of years
of speed cameras in Britain and Australia is that road speeds have
not slowed significantly, the downward trend in serious accidents
and fatalities has been almost totally lost, hundreds of thousands
of the safest drivers are convicted each year and the goodwill between
law-abiding citizens and the police is evaporating," he says.
Dr Buckingham says our road
safety strategies don't acknowledge the distinction between speed,
speeding and excessive speed.
He argues that excessive speed
is the important element - speed inappropriate for the conditions.
"Speeding generally refers
to exceeding the posted speed limit, and bears no relationship to
the current conditions," Dr Buckingham argues.
"While all speeding implies
speed, it does not necessarily imply excessive speed. Few would claim
that driving 10kmh above the speed limit on an empty motorway in good
conditions constitutes driving with excessive speed."
Dr Buckingham says the British
Transport Research Laboratory had established speed is responsible
for just 7.3 per cent of accidents, not the 30 per cent quoted by
Speed Kills proponents.
But speed remains the major
focus of road safety campaigns.
"When we come to the analysis
of the relationship between 'speeding' (rather than 'speed' or 'excessive
speed') and accidents, the evidence in Britain and Australia is remarkably
thin on the ground," he says.
"Indeed, US research on
speeding has established that those who speed moderately tend to be
the safest drivers. It is those who travel well above and well below
the posted speed limit who are the biggest risk."
That research showed the accident
involvement rate for drivers travelling on streets and highways in
urban areas was by far the highest for the slowest 5 per cent of traffic.
Roadside speed cameras don't
catch these dangerous slow drivers.
What sort of law enforcement
is that? And we're told this is a road safety initiative. So, what
has been the result of the Speed Kills strategy in Australia?
"Fatal crashes in NSW halved
between 1980 and 1991, when speed cameras were introduced," Dr
Buckingham finds.
"Since then the decline
has faltered, with a drop of just 3 per cent since 1993 despite the
implementation of double demerit points in 1997 and fixed speed cameras
in 1999.
"Even less convincing is
the case of WA which has experienced a drop of 20 per cent since speed
cameras were introduced in 1988 compared with a fall of 40 per cent
over the same period for Australia as a whole."
The failure of speed cameras
to reduce serious road accidents is not a quirk of British or Australian
data.
"Similar findings led the
government of British Columbia in Canada to scrap their cameras, Dr
Buckingham says. "Data from the British Columbia Coroner's Office
on vehicle-related fatalities showed speed cameras did not save lives.
"A 2000 report, entitled
Safe Roads, Safe Communities, stated that the program had no discernible
impact on speed or on the fatal accident rate. It also noted that
most accidents happen at slower speeds, with two-thirds of all crashes
occurring at speeds below the posted limit."
Dr Buckingham warns that millions
of motorists are being convicted each year for driving behaviour which
is perfectly safe.
"It is likely that motorists
will come to view the police's actions as cynical, vindictive and
unfair," he says.
He says the issue of speeding
highlights a familiar story of failed state intervention: The government
moves to improve the well-being of a group of people. Simplistic theories
of causation are assumed.
But when evidence emerges to
suggest that the policies are not working, they aren't dropped, but
instead more extreme policies are designed.
So, given the evidence he presents
of the failure of speed cameras, does Dr Buckingham think they should
be scrapped? No. But he says cameras should be used only to catch
the excessive speeders.
In other words, the police should
push out the tolerances on the cameras, not reduce them. That can
only be seen as revenue raising from safe drivers.
"Speed in itself does not
kill, but inappropriate speed can kill," Dr Buckingham says.
"What causes inappropriate speed is part of a wider issue of
poor driving. Poor drivers can be those who simply do not care about
other road users, they can be the inattentive or they can be the inexperienced.
"Many of these drivers,
just like safe drivers, may speed but they are also likely to behave
in other ways that causes accidents.
"Since speed cameras are
unable to distinguish between poor drivers and safe drivers, most
speed cameras should be removed and a return made to tried and tested
methods of law enforcement."
• Paul Murray hosts the morning program on 882 6PR
Email: paulmurray@6pr.com.au
