Richard Brunstrom wrote to the Daily Post...

We replied...

Richard Brunstrom is the chief constable of North Wales.

Introduction

When the following letter from Richard Brunstrom appeared in the North Wales Daily Post on 11th August 2003 we simply couldn't believe the spin and the abuse of figures.

So what's wrong?

Firstly he heads his paragraph "road death", then goes on to talk about "killed or seriously injured" (KSI) figures. Since the 2002 figures for North Wales are 44 deaths and 318 serious injuries it should be entirely obvious that the difference, put simply, is 318 deaths. We're never happy to see KSI figures - KSI is a weasel statistic designed to exaggerate road danger, mislead and sometimes even to hide the deaths figure. We've often seen Scamera partnerships claim a reduction in KSI while ignoring a substantial rise in deaths!

North Wales 2002 - all roads

fatal
12%

seriously injured
88%

If he didn't intend to mislead by quoting "KSI", why would he head the paragraph "road death"? If he wanted to talk about "road death" why didn't he?

But it gets nastier. He compares 2002 figures with a "late 1990s average". It is long established that serious injuries drop every year due to vehicle safety improvements, road engineering improvements and so on. So he's sneakily incorporating road safety gains from (for example) vehicle safety improvements as far back as 1998 (over a year before Mr Brunstrom came to North Wales!) and intending us to believe that those gains are his achievements! The North Wales Scamera partnership (calling itself "Arrive Alive") didn't start until October 2001 - so he's hoping we won't notice that gains in 1998, 1999, 2000 and most of 2001 have absolutely nothing to do with Arrive Alive.

And what improvement in "KSI" did Arrive Alive achieve in the first full year of operation (2002)? a 3.2% improvement. And what improvement came nationally in the same period? 2.8%. Mr Brunstrom might well try to claim the benefit for that 0.4% difference (which is a little over 1 KSI) but we can assure him that it is not statistically significant.

But are there other road safety initiatives going on in North Wales besides the cursed cameras? What effect are they having?

So what about the excellent improvement in North Wales KSI in 2001? It's probably partly or largely due to the foot and mouth outbreak and the travel restrictions imposed. Fewer vehicles - and in North Wales many fewer tourists - will mean fewer accidents.

Finally Mr Brunstrom claims to have the support of the people. It's hardly surprising if he has succeeded in deluding them that Arrive Alive activities have saved 154 lives in a single year. How much support would he have if the truth were told?

Casualties	fatalities	serious injuries	KSI	North Wales change on previous year (KSI)	National change on previous year (KSI)
1996	awaited	awaited	awaited	awaited	-2.1%
1997	58	461	519	awaited	-3.1%
1998	63	393	456	-12.14%	-5.0%
1999	51	417	468	2.63%	-3.9%
2000	60	372	432	-7.69%	-2.3%
2001	48	326	374	-13.4%	-2.4%
2002	44	318	362	-3.2%	-2.8%

The source for these figures is the official publication: "Road Casualties in Great Britain: Main results". It's published annually by the DfT. You can download the six copies required to create this table (here).

So we wrote to the Daily Post...

And they printed the letter on 14th August 2003...

new Since that letter we have obtained further official figures for North Wales (and filled in more of the table above)

We note that the average KSI for 1997 to 1999 using official figures from the DfT was 481 - not the 513 that Mr Brunstrom claimed. We assume therefore that he also included at least 1996 to bolster his claims.

It is absolutely amazing that a Chief Constable can use these sorts of techniques in an attempt to delude the public.

I can tell you for sure, Mr Brunstrom, you will not manage to delude everyone.

new On the 26th August, In the North Wales Daily Post the following figures were released by Inspector Alan Hughes.

Note that these are apparently accident, as opposed to casualty figures. This is how they were printed in the Daily Post:

We have no idea why they have apparently suddenly switched from casualty figures to accident figures - where more than one person is seriously injured in a crash, that makes more then one casualty, but only one accident.

Accidents	fatal	KSI	fatal change	KSI change
1998	56	368	-	-
1999	49	374	-12.5%	1.63%
2000	52	333	6.12%	-10.96%
2001	43	301	-17.31%	-9.61%
2002	41	268	-4.65%	-10.96%
2003 [doubled from figures below]	48	284	17.07%	5.97%
2003 - first 6 months	24	142	n/a	n/a

We note that these figures show larger improvements than the DfT figures in the table above. We cannot explain the difference which is at its largest in 2002.

We don't know that doubling the 2003 half year figure is the best estimate. We rather expect that the summer months in North Wales are quite heavy on casualties due to tourist traffic and expect the year end figures to be rather worse.

There's no evidence whatsoever here that Arrive Alive's road safety efforts are delivering any sort of casualty reduction.

Calling for real road safety, based on truth

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