Safe Speed is a United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 based pressure group. While notionally supporting road safety the organisation primarily campaigns against speed cameras. It has been cited in mainstream media.

History

The organisation was started in 2001 by Paul Smith, who described himself as an 'advanced motorist and road safety enthusiast' and a former computer electronics engineer which ran from Smith's home in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 as a hobby for some time until 2003 when he closed his computer engineering business and ran Safe Speed full time following a heart attack. Following Smith's death in 2007 the campaign was taken over by his partner Claire Armstrong.

Criticism

There have been few formal studies evaluating the claims made by Safe Speed:

• George Monbiot
  George Monbiot
  George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...
  
   has argued that Safe Speed is much more about speed than safety, and is part of a "culture of speed".
• The claim that "one third of road deaths are due to speed cameras" was disputed by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety
  Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety
  The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety is a United Kingdom Parliament Associate Parliamentary Group which exists "to promote human life through the promotion of transport safety for the public benefit"....
  
   (PACTS) and by the National Safety Camera Scheme
  Safety Camera Partnership
  A Safety Camera Partnership is a local multi-agency partnership between Local Government, police authorities, HMCS, Highways Agency and the National Health Service within the United Kingdom...
  
   which cite seatbelt and alcohol laws introduced prior to the 1990s, and recent increased road use and mobile phone use as better explanations for the perceived increase in casualties. Safe Speed's method of extrapolating from two years' data is also disputed.
• Which? magazine
  Which?
  Which? is a product-testing and consumer campaigning charity with a magazine, website and various other services run by Which? Ltd ....
  
  reported that NSCL cite three studies which do allow for long-term trends, and which confirm the correlation between speed cameras and accident reduction. The magazine also reported that TRL dispute Safe Speed’s interpretation of TRL 323. In particular they state that the study was dependent on subjective judgements of primary cause, and that many of the other primary causes listed also implied excessive speed. Other TRL studies (e.g. 421 and 511) have examined the relationship between speed and accidents and suggest a strong association. A study of over 300 roads, encompassing several hundred thousand observations, demonstrated that the higher the average speed of traffic on a given type of road, the more accidents there are. The study also demonstrated that injury accidents rise as average speed increases (if all else remains constant).

Further reading

• DfT's "four-year" report.
  The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.