“The judges were extremely impressed by your comprehensive data-led approach …”

So let’s see some of this data in it’s full context, and also a proper, scientific, independent analysis of it, rather than pure optimism from those who’s jobs depend on it.  

I expect Prince Michael thought he was doing good, but if he had been better informed, I don’t think he would have touched this with a barge-pole. 

Does he know that Dorset has been amongst the worst performing counties in recent years and that a reduction over a relatively short amount of time is not proof (or even indication) that things are better now?

Does he know that the evidence and common sense are suggesting that speed cameras (certainly the way Dorset uses them) are causing more deaths than they save, and that DRS actually refuses to discuss this with camera operators who must see danger resulting from mobile speed cameras every time they use them and strongly denies the negative effects of speed cameras when they are obvious to everyone else and they have been made aware of the negative effects over and over again, even "A motorcyclist was killed after braking too hard for a speed camera, a coroner said"

Or that Dorset Police do their best to conceal financial details and (also DRS) refuse to communicate with the public? 

That huge numbers of “offences” are manufactured with the help of with speed limits so low they simply can’t be taken seriously on perfectly safe roads (while enforcements are rarely seen in residential / shopping areas where speeding would be much more likely to be dangerous)?

That by deliberately detecting vast numbers of these “offences”, and then offering no points on your license thousands are diverted from the process of justice that should be processing them and this results in massive cash profit – at least 150%, this profit almost certainly protecting jobs of those who decide on enforcement and that this looks in many respects like perverting the course of justice?

Targets the greatest possible quantity of least dangerous “offending” not likely to be dangerous at all while ignoring dangerous speeding and the vast number of other serious dangerous driving offences?

Does he know that I have regularly raised complaints / concerns from before 2007 on behalf of a large number of the public, probably 100 articles are listed at www.dorsetspeed.org.uk and NOT ONE of these has been properly answered and probably 99% have not been answered at all?

Does he know that Dorset is losing 300 police but the jobs of the jobsworths at Dorset Road Unsafe look quite safe?

I’ll leave it at that for now but there’s plenty more.

Perhaps Prince Michael should be a bit more careful and look a bit more into what’s really happening in organisations before dishing out awards to them.

Comment from Idris Francis:

Hideous and sickening press release from Dorset Council

Mr. Austin might believe that the "no excuses" campaign has made a significant contribution towards the observed reductions, but there is no meaningful statistical basis for his belief - the numbers are too small and too short term to support any such conclusions.

Readers will find on www.fightbackwithfacts.com not only exposure of blatantly misleading claims and analysis by the DfT and others but graphs of road casualties nationally from 1950 and in each police area at least from 1989. Having produced those graphs over some years, from official DfT/police reports, I know without even looking at them again that there are innumerable examples of casualty reductions over and above national trend for periods of one or two years at least comparable to Dorset's figures, despite there having been no "no excuses" or other such campaigns.

If a fatal accident happened in my street today, but tonight I put a garden gnome on the kerb, and there was no accident tomorrow - I might claim that my gnome had prevented such an accident. This is only an extreme example of the sort of claim that Dorset and many other authorities have been making for years - and its utter nonsense that no statistician in his right mind would accept.