Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-17-2010

[andrewducker]

• 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' has been cast.
  (tags: writing books movies)
• Oxfordshire turns off all of their speed cameras - except two, to check people's actions. Speeding, strangely, goes up...
  (tags: law cars uk speed video)
• UK has worse social mobility record than other developed countries
  (tags: society uk)
• Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943
  (tags: photography history usa photo)
• Titanic relatives asking to die horribly in "ironic" circumstances.
  (tags: Titanic)
• German singer on trial for HIV sex.
  (tags: health hiv sex law)
• China Tops Japan as World's No. 2 Economy
  (tags: china economy japan usa business economics)

Comments

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Speeding was obviously going to go up, what I'm really interested in is seeing whether the number of accidents is going to rise sharply. It's a rather unique experiment that I think will be able to answer the question, "Do speed cameras increase road safety?" definitively, I'm looking forward to the results. :)

[matgb]

Exactly.

If I'm driving in Oxfordshire now (highly unlikely), I know I don't need to slow down when I see a speed camera.

The journalist obviously didn't get his facts right, "60% increase in people breaking the law" is wrong. "60% increase in people not slowing down at the camera site" is correct.

The whole debate is skewed and full of crap, most people break the speed limit, but it hasn't occured to anyone, including a lot of the "war on the motorist" idiots, that the problem is badly applied speed limits in many places.

[andrewducker]

That's certainly _a_ problem. It's by no means the only one. There are also idiots who speed. Apparently the deaths have dropped significantly in the road from Belfast towards Julie's parent's home since the average-speed cameras went in. Doesn't stop her mum complaining though :->

[matgb]

Oh, absolutely. There are idiots, and they drive dangerously, including speeding.

Are the accidents caused by them speeding, or by them being idiots?

[andrewducker]

"Being an idiot" never killed anyone. "Doing idiotic things" kills people, and going too fast for the road you're on is one of them.

[matgb]

Exactly.

But when 'too fast' is being defined by arbitrary limits that in many (probably not even most, but many) cases make no sense, it creates a tendancy to ignore the limit in all cases in some people.

I drive according to my judgement of safety for the road I'm on, the road to Jennie's work is a 50, I tend to not go above 40 for a lot of it because I don't think it should be a 50 due to the bends.

But on other roads that have 30 limits, I'll do 40ish at times, got pulled over on one of them once (in Devon), police basically wanted to make sure I knew it was a 30 because of the zoning laws, despite being a bypass with no pedestrian access, it went through a residential area so had to be a 30, they said they virtually never ticket anyone on the road, but do keep track of who they've warned.

Implicitly, they agreed the speed limit was daft and I was driving safely--I didn't know it was a 30 limit, and I was driving safely.

Get the speed limits that are too low, of which there are many, sorted, and severely punish those that actually cause accidents through driving too fast.

[andrewducker]

I think that many people agree that some speed limits don't make sense. But I never see campaigns for the increase of speed limits, only for the removal of methods of telling if someone is breaking the law.

[matgb]

Which is exactly my point. The people who object to speed cameras always campaign against the camera, not the law they're there to enforce, and I wonder why.

It's not something I currently campaign on one way or t'other, given the car's dead and being sold, but I do think "this device shows I break the law, ban the device" is stupid, whereas "this device helps enforce a stupid law, change the law" is supportable in many cases.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Average speed cameras are a MUCH better idea than the ones that just take a photo if you're going over the speed limit at that moment. In Cambridge we have about 5-10 miles of average speed cameras, and guess what? On that bit of road everyone perfectly obeys the speed limit. Everywhere else there is a speed camera you get people slowing down for them then speeding up to compensate.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I vastly prefer average speed cameras.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Apparently the deaths have dropped significantly in the road from Belfast towards Julie's parent's home since the average-speed cameras went in.

This is a very, very common finding when speed cameras (of any sort) are installed, but it's not quite as slam-dunk as it might appear thanks to regression to the mean. Typically, cameras are installed on bits of road where there have been a lot of accidents. (This has in fact been UK policy for years.) Which may be because those bits were particularly dangerous, or may be pure chance. If the accidents fall, it might be because people are driving more safely, or may be simple regression to the mean. Or a bit of both. There's no way of telling from the stats for a single site.

And this argument is made and countered endlessly in the debate about speed cameras, and only rarely with much light shed.

[andrewducker]

I'm aware of regression to the mean :->

This was a nasty piece of road between a city and a line of commuter towns, which idiots would drive home on at high speed. It was a known black spot for years, with speed cameras on a few spots of it. Putting an average speed camera over the length of it had, apparently, a large impact quite quickly.

[andrewducker]

Me too. I'd love to know whether we get a spike of deaths or not. If not then that would nicely demolish the arguments for them (and vice versa).

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

We've got traffic light cameras here, and the presence of the camera *increases* accidents.

(Not to mention that South Of The Border In Crazyland, traffic light cameras not only increase accidents, but the people putting them in often drastically, illegally, dangerously shorten the yellow light so that the camera will catch more people and they'll get their money back sooner. It's not pretty.)

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know by how much people speed by. I'd also like to know if these figures are being compared to prosecutions or people who were speeding and therefore wouldn't include those under 10% over the limit. I'd also like to see the long term effects of accidents in those areas.

[andrewducker]

Me too. I'd love to know whether we get a spike of deaths or not. If not then that would nicely demolish the arguments for them (and vice versa).

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

I love the photographs. Somehow, the colours of dust and sepia merge in my impression of that time. These photographs completely blow that away and it all seems wonderfully real, and really no different at all from today. Thanks.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, they almost look like Norman Rockwell paintings.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I thought the Larson film had already been made?

[andrewducker]

I saw the original Swedish version, but the inevitable US remake is in pre-production right now. David Fincher is making it, so I'm holding out hope it might be worth seeing.

More interested in seeing the second Swedish film though, which is out in two weeks.

Oh, and Larsson :->

[marrog.livejournal.com]

My enthuse for the whole affair is so low that I honestly couldn't even be bothered checking the spelling.

[andrewducker]

And yet you felt compelled to ask about it :-)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I wondered whether the ridiculous amount of hype surrounding the whole thing had been going on for so long that I thought a film that was still in pre-production had already been and gone in the cinemas. Clearly what I saw pass me by was the Swedish version.

[andrewducker]

Naah, the hype is still all about the books (number 1,2 and 3 on Amazon UK, and all in the top 6 of Amazon US).

The hype about the movies isn't due to peak until the first of the US remakes comes out in December 2011 :->

Oooh, just looked at the cast. Stellan Skarsgård is pretty much perfect. Not so convinced by Daniel Craig though.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

The Swedish ones were great. The actress playing Lisbeth was so perfect I don't know if I could see anyone else as her.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, she was awesome.