Safe Speed was a United Kingdom-based pressure group that campaigned against speed cameras, claiming that it did so on the grounds of road safety.
Safe Speed was a United Kingdom-based pressure group that campaigned against speed cameras, claiming that it did so on the grounds of road safety.
The organisation was started in 2001 by Paul Smith, a former computer electronics engineer, which ran from Smith's home in Scotland. Following Smith's death in 2007 [1] the campaign was taken over by his partner Claire Armstrong.
There have been few formal studies evaluating the claims made by Safe Speed:
Speed limits on road traffic, as used in most countries, set the legal maximum speed at which vehicles may travel on a given stretch of road. Speed limits are generally indicated on a traffic sign reflecting the maximum permitted speed - expressed as kilometres per hour (km/h) and/or miles per hour (mph). Speed limits are commonly set by the legislative bodies of national or provincial governments and enforced by national or regional police and judicial authorities. Speed limits may also be variable, or in some places nonexistent, such as on most of the Autobahnen in Germany.
A traffic enforcement camera is a camera which may be mounted beside or over a road or installed in an enforcement vehicle to detect motoring offenses, including speeding, vehicles going through a red traffic light, vehicles going through a toll booth without paying, unauthorized use of a bus lane, or for recording vehicles inside a congestion charge area. It may be linked to an automated ticketing system.
Traffic calming uses physical design and other measures to improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. It has become a tool to combat speeding and other unsafe behaviours of drivers in the neighbourhoods. It aims to encourage safer, more responsible driving and potentially reduce traffic flow. Urban planners and traffic engineers have many strategies for traffic calming, including narrowed roads and speed humps. Such measures are common in Australia and Europe, but less so in North America. Traffic calming is a calque of the German word Verkehrsberuhigung – the term's first published use in English was in 1985 by Carmen Hass-Klau.
Road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Typical road users include pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, vehicle passengers, horse riders, and passengers of on-road public transport.
Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to perceived levels of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected. Although usually small in comparison to the fundamental benefits of safety interventions, it may result in a lower net benefit than expected or even higher risks.
Rumble strips are a road safety feature to alert inattentive drivers of potential danger, by causing a tactile vibration and audible rumbling transmitted through the wheels into the vehicle interior. A rumble strip is applied along the direction of travel following an edgeline or centerline, to alert drivers when they drift from their lane. Rumble strips may also be installed in a series across the direction of travel, to warn drivers of a stop or slowdown ahead, or of an approaching danger spot.
A safety camera partnership is a local multi-agency partnership between local government, police authorities, Her Majesty's Courts Service, National Highways/Welsh Government, and the National Health Service within the United Kingdom. Their aim is to enforce speed limits and red traffic lights by the use of cameras.
In road safety management, an accident blackspot or black spot is a place where road traffic accidents have historically been concentrated. It may have occurred for a variety of reasons, such as a sharp drop or corner in a straight road, so oncoming traffic is concealed, a hidden junction on a fast road, poor or concealed warning signs at a crossroads.
Shared space is an urban design approach that minimises the segregation between modes of road user. This is done by removing features such as kerbs, road surface markings, traffic signs, and traffic lights. Hans Monderman and others have suggested that, by creating a greater sense of uncertainty and making it unclear who has priority, drivers will reduce their speed, in turn reducing the dominance of vehicles, reducing road casualty rates, and improving safety for other road users.
The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) is a registered charity. For much of its history, it was also an All-party parliamentary group of the UK parliament. In 2016, following changes to parliamentary rules, PACTS the charity was separated from the APPG and PACTS now provides the secretariat to the Transport Safety APPG. PACTS charitable objective is: To protect human life through the promotion of transport safety for the public benefit. Its annual accounts and trustees review of the year can be accessed via the Charity Commission’s website.
Vehicle activated sign (VAS) is a generic term for a type of road traffic sign which displays a message conditional upon the presence, or speed, of a road vehicle. The devices are deployed on roadsides like regular traffic signs in various countries. They are intended to help drivers by alerting them and drawing attention to danger or other undesirable situation.
Make Roads Safe is a global road safety campaign established with the aim of securing political commitment for road traffic injury prevention around the world.
Intelligent speed assistance (ISA), or intelligent speed adaptation, also known as alerting, and intelligent authority, is any system that ensures that vehicle speed does not exceed a safe or legally enforced speed. In case of potential speeding, the driver can be alerted or the speed reduced automatically.
Reuben Jacob Smeed CBE (1909–1976) was a British statistician and transport researcher. He proposed Smeed's law which correlated traffic fatalities to traffic density and predicted that the average speed of traffic in central London would always be nine miles per hour without other disincentives, given that this was the minimum speed that people will tolerate.
A traffic collision, also called a motor vehicle collision, car accident or car crash, occurs when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, pedestrian, animal, road debris, or other stationary obstruction, such as a tree, pole or building. Traffic collisions often result in injury, disability, death, and property damage as well as financial costs to both society and the individuals involved. Road transport is the most dangerous situation people deal with on a daily basis, but casualty figures from such incidents attract less media attention than other, less frequent types of tragedy.
Speed limits are enforced on most public roadways by authorities, with the purpose to improve driver compliance with speed limits. Methods used include roadside speed traps set up and operated by the police and automated roadside 'speed camera' systems, which may incorporate the use of an automatic number plate recognition system. Traditionally, police officers used stopwatches to measure the time taken for a vehicle to cover a known distance. More recently, radar guns and automated in-vehicle systems have come into use.
Road speed limits in the United Kingdom are used to define the maximum legal speed for vehicles using public roads in the UK. Speed limits are one of the measures available to attempt to control traffic speeds, reduce negative environmental effects of traffic, increase fuel use efficiency and satisfy local community wishes. The speed limit in each location is indicated on a nearby traffic sign or by the presence of street lighting. Signs show speed limits in miles per hour (mph) or the national speed limit (NSL) sign may be used.
Road speed limit enforcement in the United Kingdom is the action taken by appropriately empowered authorities to attempt to persuade road vehicle users to comply with the speed limits in force on the UK's roads. Methods used include those for detection and prosecution of contraventions such as roadside fixed speed cameras, average speed cameras, and police-operated LIDAR speed guns or older radar speed guns. Vehicle activated signs and Community Speed Watch schemes are used to encourage compliance. Some classes of vehicles are fitted with speed limiters and intelligent speed adaptation is being trialled in some places on a voluntary basis.
Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except where cyclists are barred such as many freeways/motorways. It includes amenities such as bike racks for parking, shelters, service centers and specialized traffic signs and signals. The more cycling infrastructure, the more people get about by bicycle.
Traffic collisions in India are a major source of deaths, injuries and property damage every year. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2021 report states that there were 155,622 fatalities, highest since 2014, out of which 69,240 deaths were due to two-wheelers. A study by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, U.S. shows that the use of seat belts significantly reduces the risks and injuries from road accidents, and yet there is no enforcement on use of seat belts in cars. A study by IIT Delhi points out that the national highways constitute only 2% of the length of roads in India, but they account for 30.3% of total road accidents and 36% of deaths.