"Speed cameras save lives"

Started by RobClubley, October 12, 2017, 09:24:29 AM

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RobClubley

Argh this bulls**t..
People mostly seem to be dying in head-on collisions by crossing the centre line. But they say it's all about speed, not lack of driver awareness, or lack of median barriers.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/341366/speed-cameras-missing-in-most-of-nz

Quote"Speed kills and this is definitely another tool for getting the road toll down in New Zealand," he said.
He wanted to see fixed speed cameras in every district.
Work is underway to install cameras in six further districts.
But as the country waits for those cameras to be turned on, the road toll continues to rise.
This year's toll already stands at 297 - an increase of more than 40 deaths compared to the same time last year.

All the focus on speed. Correlation does not equal causation! Fewer speed cameras are not making people crash. FFS.
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schattenblau

same old bs time after time.

in the latest round of hotair (the taupo crash) blame has been cast on everything under the sun except lack of driver skill.

brian

I don't think driver skill enters into it...................just plain stupidity and you can't stop that!!
In fact the breeding program means we can expect this to get worse.
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McDoof

I guess the argument is that: If speed is taken out of the equation, then lack of driver skill becomes less of an issue.
The latter is a difficult thing to quantify and therefore also difficult to police or enforce an action around. Speed often may not be the cause of an accident, but it does have a big impact (excuse the pun) on how much damage is done when there is a crash.

Check this out for what happens when you crash at 120MPH (that's the same as each car only 60MPH or around 100km/h)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7dG9UlzeFM

In an ideal world you could take yourself and your car to a local testing centre and get yourself and your car certified for high speed driving. A sort of WOF with extra checks. So then you could have a general speed limit and a "Certified High Speed limit" that would only apply to you if you were driving in your certified car.

But all that would be waaaay to hard to police so it falls back to the lowest common denominator where the only thing that can be enforced is a speed limit that is slow enough for even bad drivers to keep under control.
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RobClubley

Some balance added to that article:

QuoteNo link between road toll rises and cameras, says AA

As the country waits for those cameras to be turned on, the road toll continues to rise.

This year's toll already stands at 297 - an increase of more than 40 deaths compared to the same time last year.

Automobile Associaton motoring affairs general manager Mike Noon said it would, however, be wrong to link the number of fixed speed cameras with the growing road toll.

"If you speed, I'd suggest the chance of you getting caught is still just as high as it ever was" - Mike Noon

Mr Noon said in the past, just a dozen fixed cameras were moved through 45 sites.

"The public has most probably thought in the last 18 months that the camera has been in the box."

Mobile cameras were still being used "flat out" and police were still enforcing speed limits, he said.

Mr Noon said there were almost as many speeding tickets issued via cameras last year as three years earlier; 869,954 in 2016 and 877,000 in 2013.
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Worms

Quote from: McDoof on October 12, 2017, 10:32:04 AM

Check this out for what happens when you crash at 120MPH (that's the same as each car only 60MPH or around 100km/h)

It's not - A car hitting an immovable wall at 120 MPH is the same force as if it hits an equal car also travelling at 120MPH - the impact is split over both vehicles in the latter scenario.

If you put an immovable wall between the two vehicles at the exact impact point, both cars would sustain the exact same amount of impact, whether the wall was there or not (or whether the other car was there or not) - they both have to absorb the same amount of energy to stop their own mass.

Unequal mass and design alter where the force has to go and which vehicle is slowed the fastest though - generally one will come off better than the other!


RobClubley

Quote from: Worms on October 12, 2017, 12:15:17 PM
...
Unequal mass and design alter where the force has to go and which vehicle is slowed the fastest though - generally one will come off better than the other!

Like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ttkVRwOtVE
1985 ur quattro
1992 Ford Courier - the sensible daily

McDoof

Quote from: Worms on October 12, 2017, 12:15:17 PM
It's not - A car hitting an immovable wall at 120 MPH is the same force as if it hits an equal car also travelling at 120MPH - the impact is split over both vehicles in the latter scenario.

If you put an immovable wall between the two vehicles at the exact impact point, both cars would sustain the exact same amount of impact, whether the wall was there or not (or whether the other car was there or not) - they both have to absorb the same amount of energy to stop their own mass.

Unequal mass and design alter where the force has to go and which vehicle is slowed the fastest though - generally one will come off better than the other!

Nit picking really. I couldn't find a good video of a high speed head on crash.


The reality remains that any car and it's occupants having a crash at a higher speed will sustain more damage.
The results will be pretty catastrophic if you crash 2 cars at 120km/h each compared to say 100km/h
Reducing speed may not reduce car crashes, but it does reduce fatalities when crashes happen.

Don't get me wrong, I am against speed trapping for revenue generation and also as an excuse to put up permanent cameras for the same and calling them safety cameras. There have been studies in the UK that show that these safety cameras are pretty much useless at reducing crashes and in some areas even increased the number of incidents.

I think some roads need higher speed limits because they are built right with good camber angles and a decent road surface. But then you will still get some muppet doing 80k's in the fast lane. Right next to the other guy that is also doing 80k's in the slow lane. Neither of them ever looking in the rear view mirror.


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Audidude

McDoof's right.

Two cars colliding at 80kph each, is the same as hitting a wall at 80kph, NOT 160kph.

Therefore the best way to reduce your risk is to reduce the speed at which YOUR car hits something else. If two cars collide one doing 60kph and the other doing 80kph, the forces in the faster car are far greater. That's simply because the occupants decelerate from 60 to zero in one car and 80 to zero in the other. There may be some additional forces transferred into the slower car compared to hitting a wall, but nothing like an extra 20kph worth.

So the saying "the faster you go the bigger the mess" is true - so travel everywhere at 10kph folks! LOL - life needs to be reality based not bullcrap based, which is what the police response to the current crashes is.
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Naekyr

Its because of the nanny state

Basically the goverment sees driving as a right, so they make driving tests easy enough so almost everyone can get a license but not everyone can actually drive, therefore they have to put in barriers like speed limits to try and make sure people who cant drive dont kill eachother

This is why you only see police policing speed with cameras, they never police the overtaking lane for instance

McDoof

Quote from: Naekyr on October 12, 2017, 02:15:12 PM
This is why you only see police policing speed with cameras, they never police the overtaking lane for instance

A few years ago I was heading back to Auckland from the mountain and there was a line of cars about 20 cars long with something slow at the front. To my surprise nobody attempted to pass when the passing lane came up, so I floored my trusty twin turbo legacy to get past the lot. I made it past the whole lot and slowed down only to find a copper at top of hill just around the corner waiting for speeders in the passing lane. Luckily he had already pulled someone over.

Only seen this once, but it does happen.
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thomas.dq

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Gordo

Quote from: McDoof on October 12, 2017, 01:18:49 PM
Nit picking really. I couldn't find a good video of a high speed head on crash.


The reality remains that any car and it's occupants having a crash at a higher speed will sustain more damage.
The results will be pretty catastrophic if you crash 2 cars at 120km/h each compared to say 100km/h
Reducing speed may not reduce car crashes, but it does reduce fatalities when crashes happen.

Don't get me wrong, I am against speed trapping for revenue generation and also as an excuse to put up permanent cameras for the same and calling them safety cameras. There have been studies in the UK that show that these safety cameras are pretty much useless at reducing crashes and in some areas even increased the number of incidents.

I think some roads need higher speed limits because they are built right with good camber angles and a decent road surface. But then you will still get some muppet doing 80k's in the fast lane. Right next to the other guy that is also doing 80k's in the slow lane. Neither of them ever looking in the rear view mirror.

It isn't nit-picking to correct a patently false statement - and it was how I got the similarly misleading LTSA advert pulled in the early '90s.
That said, at 120kph vs 100kph there is 44% more energy to dissipate so you are dead right in that as the speed increases, the risk of severe injury, or death, increases rapidly.
You're also dead right in that there is ample evidence that speed cameras do not reduce accidents but can actually result in more - I have thought for years that they cater to the numpties who think they are "good" drivers simply because they stick to the speed limit but don't actually drive rather than just sit there with the occasional control input while they concentrate on more important things.
On cameras, I was struck by a comment made some years back by one of the German Autoban patrol officers who said something like - they concentrate on patrolling to catch bad drivers and, while they did use cameras, they were set to catch the drivers that made the cameras shake.
These are my thoughts and opinions - sometimes I'm wrong, but not often ;-)

89 Coupe

NZTA needs to stop just handing out licenses..
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Pushbutton_auto

One of the biggest revenue grabbing cameras is the Great North road one in kelston, absolute JOKE !

Its set just around a corner, just like 1,000s of other corners, nice piece of road, not a particular drag spot at all, and now people just brake, slow down for 50 yards then ACCELERATE away to make up for that 2 seconds .... %)

We need better education for drivers, not random dumb arse, penalize everyone scenarios ...   :police:   
Beating up parking wardens ain't a crime.

Pushbutton_auto

Quote from: 89 Coupe on October 12, 2017, 11:48:36 PM
NZTA needs to stop just handing out licenses..

NO, ITS NEEDS TO KNUCKLE DOWN ON THOSE MOTHER damnERS WHO SELL LICENSES ...  >:(
Beating up parking wardens ain't a crime.

RobClubley

1985 ur quattro
1992 Ford Courier - the sensible daily

80 Vert

Driver education......like sticking in the outside lane doing 95.
The worst driving I have experienced has been in NZ
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