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News and Comment May 2015

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12 May - Public Service Announcement

A lady I first met at Anna Firth’s - remember her? - impromptu Splash Park meeting on Wednesday last week tipped me off that there was no good going on in Brook Street this morning. Brook Street connects Upper Belvedere with Northumberland Heath. She kindly sent me a photograph too but as I was not far away I made a quick diversion.

Sure enough men in yellow jackets - one with a TfL logo - were putting the finishing touches to the installation of two new speed cameras which replace a single old Gatso device.

Speed camera Speed camera Speed camera Speed camera

As was noted back in 2009 Bexley council, or its Safety Partnership, has a habit of putting speed cameras at the foot of hills and in places outlawed by government guidelines - but that way it raises more money.

Speed cameras probably don’t do anything apart from raise money. When I ask my son, who used to chair a relevant European Union safety committee but now finds there is more money in advising industry bodies, what good they do he wanders off into mathematics and speaks of reversion to the mean. I think he is saying that accidents are random, they go up - and a camera might be installed - and then they go down, and they would have done anyway. Perhaps easier to understand is that accidents at speed camera sites do go down, but by no more than they go down everywhere else.

Perhaps I’ll ask Mick Barnbrook to raise an FOI on the number of accidents at the Brook Street site in the last three years. It’s too long since we last heard his name here.

My new Splash Park friend said that Bexley is Bonkers performs a vital Public Service role. I hope this announcement saves readers from being robbed.

 

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