Say senior academics

Speaking on Radio 5 live on 15th June 2004, Paul Smith of the SafeSpeed road safety campaign, revealed that new government figuresclaiming success for speed cameras included a serious statisticalerror. Paul followed this up with a press release and an open letterto the lead author of the offending report, Professor Heydecker.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign said:"Speed cameras in the UK are an unmitigated disaster. Now we seem tobe suffering, not only from the cameras themselves, but also fromlayers of deceit as those who have faith in the camera system try topaper over the spreading cracks with scientifically invalid"evidence"."

Following Safe Speed's revelations many senior academics have joinedthe complaints. They include:

Professor emeritus Mervyn Stone (UCL)Professor emeritus John Brignell (Southampton)Professor John Adams (UCL)Professor Garel Rhys (Cardiff)Professor Michael Silver (Cardiff)

Now "Numberwatch", a web site edited by Professor John Brignell, says:"In particular, one Benjamin Heydecker, who rejoices in the title ofProfessor in the Centre for Transport Studies University CollegeLondon, persistently renews this deception, although its fraudulentnature has been pointed out to him over and over again. That is theway the professorate behaves in the post-scientific age."

In a written report for the Radio 4 Today programme, Professor MervynStone said: "The three-year DfT report was released from apolitically-dictated embargo on June 15th. As I implied in my speedcamera judgement, its analysis of the data from the 24 police forceareas makes no quantitative allowance for regression to the mean.Section G3 of the report gives reasons for thinking that theestablished statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean will notapply in full measure".

I interpret this to mean that the authorsacknowledge that the estimates of savings of casualties and accidentsin the Executive Summary should be taken as upper bound estimates.Will the public be made sufficiently aware of this qualification? Wasthe minister?"