Safe Speed Forums

I'm afraid that I can't post the analysis to support this thread at the moment (network issues ), but the numbers are on the DfT site for you to recreate at home. I'll try to supply something tomorrow.

Meanwhile the two pertinent datasets are Index of vehicle mileage, accidents and casualties: by road user type and severity: 1926 to 2003 which contains the population of the UK and Road accidents and casualties: 1950-2003 containing traffic volumes.

Paul has mentioned to me before now that the recession of the late eighties/early nineties caused a dip in many motoring figures, today I noticed something new.

It struck me that motoring statistics are necessarily affected by the number of people around. The more people there are, the more there will be on the roads and therefore more will be involved in incidents.

If you divide traffic volumes, deaths and injuries by the population of the country. The traffic volume per capita actually levels out between 1989 and 1993. This is a pretty amazing fact on its own, but only serves to show the huge effect of the recession. What is more amazing is the nose-dive taken by deaths and serious injuries in the latter half of this period.

It set me thinking. Was this dip because the average experience of drivers was increasing due to a lack of new drivers (doing significant mileage)? Perhaps the existing drivers were doing fewer miles daily, thereby reducing fatigue. Maybe drivers were on the road less regularly and therefore took less for granted?

Any thoughts?

Possibly less mileage due to recession. Also ... there was more awareness of danger and less reliance on gadgets...

Worryingly - our guys have pulled more reps and HGV drivers thinking they were were impaired from illegal substance. Turned out they were "tired"

Longer distances, more "monotony as drive takes longer" amongst the excuses. A lot, in fact, claim that ABS, air bags, crumple zones protect Perhaps the gadgets have led to certain amount of complacency

They do protect .... to a certain extent ... but not in Cinderalla's fairy godmother terms You have to know how to use the safety gadgets and be aware of their limitations.

We have logged all the excuses for records and analyses ... but still prosecuted for undue cares, speeding etc.

(And some of you will no doubt ask me "How can we!!! How can I condone this! Unfair!")

Well ... take the view that driver is "manager" and as such should be able to judge whether or not he or she feels fit enought o handle machinery which is quite capable of harming themselves or another person in real terms ... and we have an obligation to protect people from themselves under those circumstances.

However, am prepared to acknowledge that an inappropriately low speed limit can increase danger - from fatigue and can alos cause concentration to wander.

Most of you know that we do apply common sense in reality which does depend very much on circumstance and attitude

V8 Archie ... cannot really answer your question (nor the other one about the SIs -- Mad Doc is perhaps better equipped for that one).

But it is certainly food for some speculation. I have tried to give you pointers from my side - as I have seen and assessed the increases.

I also think that the reduction in my number, over reliance of road safety on a camera, decline of road safety adverts have also impacted on behaviur and knowledge of the Highway Code over this same period of time ... all of which picked up on in Paul's manifesto.

Just my initial two pennorth worth of thought

Just a thought, but if tiredness can affect our judgement when driving can it also affect our judgement on whether to drive or not in the first place? Could this be a reason why InGear & co. are pulling more tired drivers these days?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Here it is, the picture that set my mind racing...

To fit it all on one graph in a sensible fashion each line has been factored so that its maximum value is 100. For the each of the accident and casualty lines this maximum value is at 1965/6. Unsurprisingly, for traffic its 2003.



Note the steep drop in the highlighted region.

One possible reason for some of the drop is the caveat in the raw data that counting methods changed in 1993. However, I see the drop in this year as continuing that of the year before. (I hope they weren't mucking with the figures then).[/img]

That steep drop is the recession we had at the time. We don't know exactly why a recession causes such an effect, but every recession we've had recently is visible on those graphs doing somthing similar.

See the 1973 oil crisis?

I suspect one of the main reasons is that we chop out leisure travel in times of recession and leisure travel is somehow riskier than other types.

There's also a process of adaptation to greater traffic flows that may be costing us in times of economic normality.

The late 1960s hump has a very simple explanation. See:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/smeed.html

Basically traffic growth in percentage terms became smaller than safety improvements in percentage terms.

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Paul Smith
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The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety