Cambridgeshire Speeding Statistics - 70% of drivers speed

houghw

This report (or one very similar to it) has appeared in the Cambridge Evening News a couple of times now.

The last time it was reported I took a closer look at the figures quoted and came tot he conclusion that the report was nothing more than sensational headline grabbing and that the figures can not stand up to close scrutiny!

According to the report, when the survey was carried out, around 75% of motorists were found to be speeding and a total of x,000 drivers were recorded travelling above the speed limit (I'm sorry, I can't remember the exact figures now).

I did a bit of number crunching and came to the conclusion that these figures were arrived at by taking a small sample (say looking at an hour or two's worth of traffic at a busy time of the day) and simply multiplying the results up to get these sensationally high numbers of speeding motorists.

If you actually used the figures quoted and increased the number of claimed speeding motorists to include all motorists along that stretch of road, it worked out the you would have to had a car passing in both directions once every 15 seconds, 24 hours a day, to clock up the number of motorists claimed to be driving along the roads in these articles.

As I said in the article, there are lies, damned lies and statistics and I suggest that these articles are being deliberately manipulated by Cambridgeshire Police to either (a) justify more speed cameras or (b) a larger police budget for next year!

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