The Great Speed Camera lie of London To prove that speed cameras reduce accidents, the authorities frequently point to the number of road accident fatalities in London after the introduction of speed cameras.
Speed cameras reduce accidents.
All very convincing if you only bother to look at the data they present to you, and listen to the explanation they attach to it. The year they chose to install speed cameras was a particularly bad year for accidents. The truth is that accidents occur at random for many reasons, they do not occur at regular intervals, therefore in any given year there will be a random number of accidents, and it is simply not possible to conclude that any minor variation either way is due to anything other than random fluctuation. To take two years in isolation and attempt to claim a relationship between a random fluctuation in accidents and the use of speed cameras is statistical chicanery at best, and at worst a downright lie. This is yet another example of how the government simply cannot be trusted when it comes to pronouncements about 'speed'.