M4 stats rubbished

The Wiltshire safety camera partnership has published results on the first year of speed camera use on the M4 but safety campaigners have already rubbished the results.

The results claim a massive 60 percent reduction in deaths and serious injuries on the road but Paul Smith, founder of campaign group Safe Speed, says the results have been published too soon and the drop is unlikely to have been caused by the presence of speed cameras.
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“Analysis and interpretation of road accident statistics requires considerable care and scrupulous honesty because road accidents are rare and exceptional events” said Smith.

“It is necessary to separate random effects from real changes. I am absolutely incensed that, once again, a camera partnership is making outrageous and unjustified claims for their cameras based on insufficient data and insufficient analysis. It is in fact an object lesson in ‘how to lie with statistics’.”

The Association of British Drivers has hit out as well saying that only 15 percent of crashes on the M4 were caused by speeding.

“There’s something very odd going on here,” said the ABD’s Director of Policy Mark McArthur-Christie. “We have a speed camera partnership claiming credit for reducing accidents that weren’t even caused by speeding. This seems disingenuous at best.”

Click the links below to read the Wiltshire safety camera partnership’s report, see Paul Smith outline seven reasons why the reported results cannot be taken in to account and the ABD’s press release calling the figures in to doubt.