In a spin: Speed cameras and the fallacy of road safety.

Recently, with the cut in funding and subsequent turning off of speed cameras in Oxfordshire there has been a great deal of chatter about how this will increase the numbers of deaths on the roads. Today had the local speed camera organisation, "Thames Valley's Safer Road Partnership", spouting statistically unsustainable statistics about how many people were now breaking the speed limit as opposed to when the cameras were operational. (Notably, they didn't say by how much the speed limit was being broken by. Also, one location is notorious for chavish lads driving recklessly, which wouldn't be halted by the camera.) www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-10929488

Two days ago we had another pressure group and a number of police chief constables put their oar in: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10911436. One basically saying that there would be carmogedden and the other blaming the middle classes for speeding "until one of their family got killed." That second one is laughable if you've ever lived anywhere close to a "working class" neighbourhood.

The trouble with all this spin and hoo-hah is that the evidence for speed being the main killer on the roads is just not there. In 2008 only 14% of road accidents had speed as a contributory factor. www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casualtiesgbar/rrcgb2008 Note that this is ALL accidents reported to the police and not just lethal ones. So, speed cameras, even if they were 100% effective, would not help in 86% of accidents.

So, now we know that speed is not as high a risk as the quangos who run the cameras and the police forces (who don't want to spend money on traffic enforcement officers) would make out, do cameras actually help at all?

Well, in some locations I'm sure that they do. In most locations, however, they're more of a hazard than a help. How many times have you seen a car brake heavily (usually from a speed under the speed limit already) to pass a speed camera? I've seen it quite a number of times, causing the cars behind to have to make sudden braking maneuvers themselves. i.e. increasing the risk of an accident. Also, forcing drivers to be more concerned about the absolute speed of their vehicle and watching the speedo more and more decreases the time they have to concentrate on other road hazards or taking note of what an appropriate speed for the situation might be, again increasing the risk of an accident.

If you add to this the congestive effect of cars slowing to well below the speed limit to pass the cameras and, on a road close to capacity, causing the generation of a solitary wave of congestion to pass back along the queue causing a complete jam.

What about the other "safety" features imposed by local authorities on the roads in the name of safety?

Well, there are the extensive 50 mph speed limits which seem to encompass huge swathes of the A road network. It seems that the default reaction when there are an above average number of accidents on a road is to restrict the speed limit by a mere 10 mph. The fallacy here is that doing so will automatically cut incidents.

Let's break down the logic using a specific example, the A420 between Oxford and Swindon. There are a few places where the junctions are relatively blind and would benefit from the traffic being slowed. It could be said that in these areas 50 mph is still way too high and a 40 mph limit would be more appropriate in the close vicinity of the junction. However, for most of the road the national speed limit of 60 mph is not a dangerous speed (under good road conditions). The majority of fatal accidents on the road, however, are from drivers who have been reckless and have been speeding, losing control of their vehicle on bends. Note: these people are already breaking the speed limit.

So, the knee-jerk reaction has been to decrease the speed limit on about two-thirds of the whole length of road to 50 mph. Firstly, his will not help to greatly reduce the danger on the risky junctions as the time to see a vehicle from the junction before turning out onto the road has not decreased by much. Secondly, those who caused accidents by speeding recklessly will still ignore the speed limit. (And no, more speed cameras wouldn't help.)

In other words, the responsible majority have been hugely inconvenienced and no real good has come from it other than to allow the councils to say that they're doing something.

Of course, I am talking heresy. Tut-tut. The slogan says, "Speed kills!" but actually it doesn't. Changing the slogan to "Inappropriate speed is highly risky" wouldn't go down well as it's not punchy enough. Of course, it's not the speed which kills ultimately, it's the rapid deceleration.

Just my two-penny's worth...

Task completed: Some thoughts on the experience.

On Tuesday evening I took off the kilt for the last time. The month had passed relatively uneventfully but in the end I was glad that I could change back into trousers again.

The kilt was generally very comfortable to wear and after the half way mark had become "normal" as had not wearing any underwear beneath the kilt. Gone had the feeling of being naked in public and it was now natural.

No, none of these were the reasons that I was glad that the month had ended. Kilts are merely inconvenient. Or rather, the gubbins associated with them are a pain. You see, the kilt itself does take extra work to put on and take off but then there is the sporran, which needs its chain to be thread through the loops at the back. It needs to be taken off whenever you go to the loo and gets in the way when driving. It's also not as good as a good pair of pockets for storing things.

The kilt itself is a pain in the behind, literally, when sitting in the car. The bucket seat design forces you to sit on the copious pleats which then after a few minutes create pressure points. Driving for more than a quarter of an hour is highly uncomfortable.

Having said all that, I'm glad I went through the experience and I would recommend that everyone try wearing a skirt (let's face it, that's what a kilt is) without anything beneath for at least two weeks, preferably three. The first two weeks are to get used to the feeling and the third to show yourself that it is actually a perfectly valid thing to be able to do infinitum if wanted. Also, it'll show you that there's nothing sexual about such a way of dressing either. Maybe if everyone did this there would be less prejudice about clothing choice.

Will I wear a kilt again? I don't know. Not to work, even though a number of people have said word to the effect that they miss seeing me in the outfit. (There are a few who are glad that I'm back in trousers.) I've found the change back to anonymity interesting as well. People are truely strange creatures, especially those who allow clothing choice to colour their whole world.

And what about the transition back to trousers? Well, less of a bother than expected. It did take a few hours before I could feel comfortable again but after that had passed it was back to normal again. Still, trousers with undies underneath are certainly more sweaty and probably far less healthy in warm weather.

And what about the charity fund raising? Well here I am totally amazed. Currently the sum is approximately £1100! I never thought I'd get anywhere near the £1000 mark and I've topped it. This is very good news.

And so, now life goes back to normal and I can climb ladders or lift heavy objects off the floor without worrying that I'm going to give someone a view they weren't expecting. In that way being back in troose is very liberating.

A week to go and three gone by.

Well, by this time next week I will have finished my calendar month long task of wearing a kilt. Essentially, it will end with me changing into my badminton gear after getting home from work.

I must admit that it will be strange to go back to wearing trousers. Wearing the kilt has become very normal now. What I won't miss will be the long socks (which are hot and itch in this weather) and the masses of pleats at the rear of the kilt which make sitting in the car very uncomfortable and actually painful after a while. Oh, and then there are the inconveniences of all the tackle such as the sporran and the belt.

Having said that, walking around (when the sporran is lightly loaded) is very comfortable. So, they do have their advantages.

The other thing I'll have to get used to again is the anonymity in the street. But then again I've now got so used to the looks that I hardly notice them any more.

Anyway, there's still a week to go, though I don't see any major challenges to overcome during that time, other than warm weather.

The iPhone 4 and Bluetooth keyboard… It works!

Well, I've been testing out the usability of a ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboard which I bought originally to go with my Nokia N800 with the Apple iPhone 4.

Well, as you can see, it does actually work and works well.

If you add a proper keyboard to the high resolution of the iPhone 4's display then it actually makes for a decent "on the go" blog updating device.

Well, it would if the WYSIWYG editor plug-in for WordPress would actually work within Safari, which it doesn't. This means that you are forced to revert to the WordPress application and its insistence on the document being prepared in plain HTML. Not (non-technical) user friendly at all. (And a bit of a pain even if you are technically minded.)

By the way, to prove that it's possible to do it, this article has been written entirely on the iPhone 4 + ThinkOutside keyboard combination.

Oh, and one very useful thing is that the "web application" key on the keyboard emulates the big button at the bottom of the iPhone.

And now it’s half way…

I can't believe that it's been about a week since my last update. Then again it's been pretty busy and I've hardly spent any time at home. Anyway, on with the post.

Well, it's now been a little over two weeks since I started wearing the kilt and there's approximately the same to go until the 3rd August, the last day of the challenge. So, how have things been going?

In general, there's not a huge amount to report on the actual kilt wearing side other than all of a sudden it's started feeling scarily normal. That is, since yesterday it's not felt unusual at all to be wearing essentially a skirt with nothing underneath, to the point where I'm forgetting about it. Previously it's been comfortable but unusual. I'm going to have to be more careful to remind myself how to sit etc.

The only real down side to wearing the kilt is that it's a faff to get in and out of the car and the bunched up kilt is darned uncomfortable to sit on when driving. I s'pose it was never designed for car driving.

As for people's reactions. I'm still seeing a very mixed bunch, though I'm noticing it a lot less. I was out around town on Friday evening and the reactions I got ranged from an old woman scowling and saying, "Why?! Why?! Why?!" under her breath to a student aged woman saying, "I like the kilt. I've been trying to get my boyfriend to wear one but he won't. More men should wear kilts." Admittedly, the great majority of people seemed to either not notice or mentally blank it out.

I have had even more positive reactions today, however. Firstly, when I was walking to buy lunch, a fellow came up to me and asked what sort of kilt it was. I explained that it was just a casual kilt and happened to be black. Anyway, the conversation continued and it turns out that he works in the Pitt Rivers Museum and had now had the idea that maybe it would be interesting to try wearing a kilt.. So, I may have a convert!

Secondly, someone who used to work in our accounts department came visiting the Department. She thought that my kilt looked really go and, once again, that it suited me and why didn't I continue to wear it after the month s up? This was echoed again elsewhere by one of our Chinese academic visitors. She thought that too many people in the Department just wear the same old clothes and so why didn't I keep wearing the kilt?

Is there a secret society out there trying to persuade me?!

As for my colleague's reaction. Other than an initial, mild reaction at the IT support staff conference there's been no problem, thankfully. So it's all good.

Anyway, two and a bit weeks to go!

Passing the quarter mark.

Well, I've been wearing the kilt for a bit over a week now and I've passed the quarter mark for the challenge.

I must admit that on the whole, so far it's been easier than I imagined to begin with. The reactions have been nowhere near as negative. I have found it surprising how many people continue to tell me that the kilt suits me and that I should carry on. I'm still not tempted to do so yet.

Over the weekend I did quite a long trip away from home, going to a party in Warrington, staying overnight in a hotel and coming back via Chester to meet up with some more old friends. Again, this was easier than expected. I had thought that being so far away from any items of underwear would make me more nervous. In the end it didn't bother me at all. Maybe I am getting fully used to the whole thing.

This morning, due to the rain, for the first time in almost a week I had to wear clothing which encased my legs (waterproof trousers). I was surprised to find just how really uncomfortable it was. These trousers cannot be said to be at all tight. In fact they're really baggy. However, they felt so very restrictive and the seams literally painful. I'm wondering now how the shorts I wear for badminton will feel tomorrow evening. Of course, it also makes me wonder how the transition back to wearing trousers on the 4th August will be as well.

Still, I have three weeks to go yet and I've got to get through the University IT support staff conference on Wednesday, including bowling in the evening. I've also got the return to work of my colleague on Thursday. She had a very poor reaction to my wearing of the kilt for the photoshoot and I'm just hoping that she can get over her aversion quickly.

I do hate causing some people to be uncomfortable but there's not a great deal I can do about it.

Kilt wearing: Days three to five.

Well, there's not a great deal new to report on the actual kilt wearing. I think I've worked out all the day-to-day problems. There's still a surprising disparity between people's reactions. Thankfully, most reactions are either that they ignore the kilt now or, when I'm walking outside of the Department, sometimes amusement and sometimes trying not to look as though they're looking.

There was one item of note, however, and that was badminton on Tuesday evening. Now, during the day there's a roll-call e-mail which goes around. Of course, there was the obligatory quip about me wearing the kilt to badminton in the evening, followed by a few more. So, I thought, I'd better make sure that this was not the general view. After all, if everyone wanted me to turn up wearing the kilt maybe I should. Anyway, thankfully sanity prevailed and I wore my normal t-shirt and shorts. What did surprise me was that after only about two and a half days of wearing the kilt the shorts felt so alien and uncomfortable. Goodness knows what it's going to be like by the end of the month.

I think that at the beginning of next week I'm going to send out second general e-mail to both the departmental and the IT support staff lists reminding them of the kilt challenge and how to sponsor me.

As for the donations so far, the total is up to £428 so far. I wonder if I can make it £1000 by the end of the month. I somewhat doubt it.

First day at work… and an interesting ride on the bike.

It's been an interesting day.

It began semi-normally, i.e. showered and got dressed. But of course, this morning I put on the kilt. This did start the ball rolling on the rest of the day's events.

The thing I was most worried about the cycling was getting on and off the bike without flashing too much. This turned out to be the least of my worries in the end. The structure of a kilt, being essentially a wrap-around skirt with the front "apron" being the overlap, caused while riding the the two front parts to start to move outwards. Thankfully, with the help of the sporran, they never separated and hence no-one caught a glimpse of anything other than my legs (and my rump every now and again when the pleats flew up).

Because of this, once I got to work I secured the edge of the front flap to the rear where it overlaps using the kilt pin. This, strangely, was said to be not how to do it in the instructions I'd found about kilt wearing. Still, it worked and this evening the kilt was far better behaved.

As for the rest of the day, well, there were some interesting reactions which essentially could be put into three categories really:

1. Smile and/or be supportive.
2. Blank it out, pretend that there's nothing different.
3. Look away, get embarrassed. (And no, I'm not talking of them seeing something which they shouldn't.)

Now, by far the most numerous were the (2) group, though this was generally more common outside of work. In work the split was probably something like (1) 70%, (2) 25% and (3) 5%. (This shouldn't be taken as hard data, merely the "grab a figure out of the air" affair.)

I'm not really sure why anyone would want to be embarrassed about someone else wearing clothing which is only slightly unusual. People are strange.

Still, most of the reaction was very positive. Let's see how day two at work goes.

And so it begins…

Well, the time has arrived for the start of my month of kilt wearing.

So, this morning I packed away all my trousers into a wardrobe I hardly used and cleared out my underwear and packed that away as well. It was more a symbolic event to hide them and hence not remind me or tempt me to put any on, even in private.

My first forays into the world wearing the kilt will be up to Maplin's to get some earbud foam covers for the new iPhone's earphones, returning via a garden centre for bird seed and thence to Sainsbury's for the weekly shop.

Anyway, I s'pose I'll have to get on with it.

P.S. I wonder how I'll feel about the whole thing in a month's time. Who knows, maybe the trousers will never come out of the wardrobe. I somewhat doubt it, however. It would solve a whole load of problems finding clothes if I did, seeing how impossible it's become to get trousers to fit me.

Living with the iPhone 4

So, it's been almost a week since the arrival of the iPhone 4 on the doorstep and with all the hoo-hah in the forums and the press I thought I'd give my opinion on the device an actual use. It should be noted that my previous smartphones have been the Handspring Treo 600, Palm Treo 680 and iPhone 3G so I do have quite a background in the use of the things from really their first iteration.

Well, lets first get down to the big issue of the moment, the reception problems. Yes, there is a problem but it's nowhere near as bad as made out by fanbois and Apple-haters. I often hold the phone in my left hand and if I merely make sure I hold it very slightly higher than I usually would (by about 1cm) my palm misses the area of the insulating gap, problem solved. My advice to those who are complaining is to grow up, get a life and move on. All technology has flaws, it's inherent in the structure of the Universe that it's a compromise, tough, live with it. If you're REALLY bothered with it then put a 1cm strip of sticky tape over the area of the gap. Even if you then bridge that gap then the resistance of your skin will be enough to attenuate the problem to a tiny value.

Having said that, there is a bug in the radio part of the software which I've discovered. Here's how to reproduce it:

1. Go to an area with no of highly marginal signal strength.
2. Go into the Carrier control panel and select the service provider manually if one appears.
3. Wait until the phone complains about loss of service.
4. Select Automatic from the list of service providers and close the control panel.
5. Reboot the phone.

You will now find that even when you go into an area with strong signal the phone won't be able to pick it up. To fix this you will need to turn Airplane Mode on and then off again to resume normal operation.

Other than these two problems I've not had any others and the device has been fast and rock solid.

In general use the whole thing is a pleasure to use. The screen is beautiful and has a very wide viewing angle. iOS4 is merely an evolution of the iPhone OS so that works practically the same as previous versions, i.e. slick. The web browser, Safari, is actually fast enough to use now on sites with complex CSS. On the iP3G some sites would take almost a minute to render with a fast WiFi connection but on the iP4 they take less than 5 seconds.

The camera system works and produces pretty good images. Not quite up to dedicated camera standards but not far off. The only criticism I have with it is that the colour balance tends to over emphasise reds or give a red hue to the whole image. The videos produced are pretty good as well, better than my FujiFilm FinePix F31fd compact camera can produce. I'm not saying that it's dedicated cam-corder quality but definitely usable and the microphone hardly ever picks up wind noise.

As for the battery life. Well, the iPhone 3G in the area I have been this week would last just about 24 hours on a charge or, if I'm playing Bejewelled 2 a great deal, about 5-6 hours. In comparison the iPhone 4 generally drops 1%-3% per hour (I can't give a percentage for the iP3G as it doesn't have a percentage measure) which would put the battery life in the region of 30-90 hours. When playing Bejewelled 2 the battery is depleted by about 10% per hour, so that's about double the life of the iP3G. Therefore, it's not quite in the same league as the Handspring Treo 600, which lasts about 10 days on a charge in normal use, but it's certainly getting close to the life of most non-smartphones. (It's also infinitely better than the Palm Treo 680 which would struggle to last 8 hours on a charge.)

So, there you have it. The iPhone 4 works and (other than one flaw which is easily worked around) works well and is a definite jump in usability over the iP3G, especially in terms of speed, screen and battery life.

Many will quibble about the unsubsidised, unlocked version of the iP4 at about £600 but they forget that the unsubsidised price of most smartphones is about the same. For me the price of the tool is worth it, your mileage may vary.