The unfortunate truth is that gatso and specs cameras in roadworks increase accidents rather then reduce them according to the Transport Research Lab. If you want to reduce accidents then you need regular police presence which reduces accidents by 25% Staffs police have finally cottoned on to this an are patrolling the A500 at high accident risk times. Hopefully they might try and educate drivers to leave more space between vehicles as this is the crucial factor in accident avoidance more than their actual speed as many of the impacts happen around slip roads.
If you make people watch their speed too closely then they start to pay more attention to that than what they should be paying attention to. Most people know their true speed within 5-10mph so enforcement should never be within those amounts so that people can concentrate on the road ahead and roughly comply with the limit. This would be safer all round. In specs and gatso areas traffic bunches much more which is inherently more dangerous than well spaced vehicles. Also if the speed enforcement is too narrow you lose the option to quickly speed up briefly to create space.
What is needed is a long term comparison in work force injury rates per mile of roadworks for enforced and non-enforced limits over the last decade or so. Once knowing this you could see what is working. The trl study was a site comparison so should be reasonably accurate but an increase in workforce injury over time while increased enforcement occurs would be quite a smoking gun for relying on speed enforcement as the only choice.
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