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.
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.