Speeding, the road toll, and the propaganda

Queensland - Indoctrination before Introduction

Whilst any move that will reduce the road toll should be supported and commended, an analysis of all the facts suggests that the advertising campaigns and the statistics presented are censored and propagandized in order to support certain ulterior motives.

The current campaign which seeks to sell the message that speeding is public enemy number one uses a variety of situations to underline the indisputable fact that the faster you go the greater the braking distance. This is all very well but the advertisements seek to imbue the police officers (yes they are REAL police officers - no one else could act that badly) with a god like ability to know the perfect maximum speed under all conditions - you guessed it - the speed limit. Any faster, even by a mere10km/h (which coincidentally is most likely to be the threshold limit for the speed cameras) and you go from safe to suicidal.

An analysis of the statements presented in the campaign highlights just how much they have stretched the truth.

Why lie about speed

There are many reasons why the general public are being fed a diet of half truths and lies. They include:

1. Government (and politicians in particular) are always under pressure to be seen to be "doing something" or else what are they there for? A good example of this was when the Transport Minister, Vaughan Johnson, recently carped about "the alarming holiday statistics in Queensland" and how he was going to do something about it. All this in the year that Queensland recorded its lowest road toll since 1965!
2. Shrinking government funds in the wake of numerous "do something" schemes leads to a search for new ways to "tax". If you can make people believe that it's all in the name of road safety then you have found a good way to con the bulk of the people. Back this up with a saturation campaign that presents the message "Speeding is the major factor in the road toll" and you have the game sewn up.
3. Radar is a fairly easy way to collect revenue from otherwise law abiding citizens but it requires some investment in manpower. Increasingly greedy governments are being persuaded to opt for totally automated systems that will provide a higher return on investment.
4. Addressing the real issues such as; better roads and highway systems, driver education, targeting alcohol and drug affected drivers, and identifying the truly dangerous drivers is either too expensive or just too much hard work.
5. The road toll (especially when expressed as deaths per kilometre) is trending downward throughout the world so why not set up a "program" so that you can claim credit for it.
6. For years "speed" has been the convenient whipping boy. To change focus now would expose the sins of the past.

How is the speed camera system going to operate in Queensland?

If it is going to be anything like the arrogant "guilty until proven innocent" laws in Victoria, then we have a lot to worry about. Check out their charming FAQ page. These guys won't even contemplate the thought that their precious devices might occasionally return an error. The RADAR site gives some good insight into the kinds of technical problems that can interfere with the accuracy of a radar reading.

If the record of Governments in British Columbia, Victoria and Britain is anything to go by it is likely that the promises they make about using the technology responsibly to target genuine problem areas will soon be broken. Hopefully they won't be silly enough to employ contractors on commission.

Does the posted speed limit really have any effect

Martin R. Parker Jr. M.E. Conducted a detailed study in 22 states of the USA of the effects of raising and lowering speed limits on the speed that drivers choose to travel. The study concludes that speed limit is irrelevent to average driver's speed

Bedard of Car and Driver Magazine also examines this same issue with some flair.

Effectively, people drive at a speed that "feels comfortable" for them. This is based on their assessment (either conscious or sub-conscious) of the risks relative to the conditions. For many the limiting factor might be that above 10-15k/h higher than the speed limit the risk of being booked rises dramatically. In other cases it may be that the road conditions are not good, but in general people have little respect for speed limits when they feel they have been set well below a reasonable safe speed.

The Association of British Drivers has also observed the perils of taking the conscious judgement of what represents a safe speed away from the driver in their Truth about Speed page

Speed limits generally set too low

Tignor is the chief of the Traffic Safety Research Division of the Federal Highway Administration in McLean, Virginia. Warren is a Highway Research Engineer at the same facility.

The use of the 85th percentile technique is covered in more detail by the National Motorists Association

Is speed the major contributing factor to causing accidents

Other evidence suggests that the main speed related danger is in the band where the driver is either traveling much faster or indeed much slower than the bulk of the traffic.

If we accept the argument that speed alone is a big factor in the cause of accidents then it would logically follow that in countries such as Germany, where there is effectively no limit on speed on the autobahns, there would be a higher fatality rate than in say the USA where for many years the speed limits were set at 55mph. In fact what we see is that the fatality statistics are trending down for both counties at almost identical rates.

Furthermore the effects of raising and lowering the national speed limit in the USA is not discernible in the statistics. The argument that other factors such as lower incidence of drink driving, combined with general improvements to the highway system as well as direct improvements in car safety is far more credible and in line with the statistical trend.

But in Victoria the road toll dropped dramatically

1. Several of their graphs are scaled to make the drop look more dramatic than it is (e.g. the Y axis begins at 200.
2. We are not told what other measures were in force during that period. Naively we might assume that all other variables remained steady but in actual fact this is not the case as disclosed in their own statement: Victorian Road Safety Initiatives Since 1970. Clearly, if police resources are freed up (as they say they are) then greater concentration on such things as drink driving would lead to a drop in the road toll, but with no actual causal link to the introduction of speed cameras.
3. For some reason some of the graphs are presented as 12 month moving averages. One wonders whether the statistics began trending down before the introduction of speed cameras.

10km/h = Six car lengths in the wet (yeah right!)

To begin the analysis, I tabulated some dry braking distances reported in the latest Road and Track Magazine for a variety of typical vehicles. I then applied a little high school physics to compute the respective braking distances. A tyre test from February 1984 edition of Wheels provided some indicative figures for wet braking. It is also worth pointing out that the wet braking results were recorded using a full lockup test on flooded asphalt to improve the reproducibility of the results. This gives a worst case braking distance with considerable improvement on this being possible with careful application of the brakes (or ABS)

The table below shows the braking distances at various speeds for both wet and dry conditions. Importantly the difference in the wet between 100 and 110 km/h is only 13 metres under the worst possible driver error i.e. the brakes are totally locked up. (thus our ill informed investigating officer's car length is about 2.2 metres c.f. about 4.5 for a typical car) The advertisement carefully avoids using any quantitative language but suffice it to say most people are not thinking of motor-bike lengths when they think of "car-lengths".

Under dry conditions the difference in braking distances is a mere 10 metres, with the car on a dry road able to travel at 126 km/h before the braking distance is equivalent to 110 km/h in the wet.

Even if we assume that our mate Officer Whingy is comparing wet braking distance at 110 km/h with dry braking distance at 100 km/h we can only come up with 27.6 metres which might be about right, but then we have a clear case of deceptive advertising that probably wouldn't stand the test if we were comparing competitive products. The fact that the wet conditions contribute more to the braking distance increase than the increased speed suggests a slogan of "Slow down in the wet" might be more appropriate.

So when the female officer asks "So 10 km/h makes that much difference?" he should be saying "No, actually the wet road conditions are more to blame than the speed"

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