Safe Speed Forums

I've been unable to find 'Highway economics note one' for over a year on the DfT web site. But a link in Hansard found it. Here it is:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 30763.hcsp

This is a gross distortion of road safety truth. It is used to create inflated economic estimates of the costs of road crashes as a means of favouring other modes of transport and thereby promoting modal shift.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

human costs seems to be defined as "a number that we just made up to make the figures look bad".

The human costs for a fatal are an interesting one to consider...


They quote an average number of £860,380 for the human cost.

But the same government has quite different figures for the human cost (or compensation paid anyway) if it isn't a road accident - lets take a terrorist attack for instance


A slight discrepancy perhaps?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4363040.stm

One SCP made a claim about saving £8m and it was posted on traffic-answers.com - I argued for ages but they couldn't grasp the facts so I gave up:
http://www.traffic-answers.com/forum/in ... pic=2411.0
edit: I looked just now and I think they grasped it in the end!

This is the article that sparked it, the wording is pretty amazing - some selected parts:

http://www.safespeedforlife.com/readnews.asp?id=42


The fact they quoted a Hansard written answer shows they didn't understand the TRUE source of the figures, otherwise they will have seen that the £1.4 million DOES include emotional cost!

The £1m+ figure is widely abused by SCP's, Julian Hewitt from Hants SCP has used it several times over the years saying each fatal costs "local taxpayers" £Xm and it is a cost "we all have to pay".

Gareth

This sort of rubbish ignores the fact that accidents make no difference to the death rate. It is still one death per person in the long term.
It is likely that in the process of dying, or getting ill and recovering in the future, medical costs costs will be incurred. The "emotional" costs, funeral costs etc. will be the same whenever the person dies.
So the only thing that matters is the ADDITIONAL cost of clearing up after the accident, deploying of emergency services etc., and MINUS the cost of the medical treatment that person would have needed in the remainder of their life.

Which is a very good point.

The cost of a premature death to society is the benefits derived from the rest of their expected life MINUS the costs to support the rest of their expected life. Everything apart from direct accident cleanup is just deferred until you finally die of something else.

Viewed in this brutal way, then somebody who dies in a RTA at or after retirement age has a large negative cost - or to put it bluntly they save the UK the costs of their pension and benefits, the costs of health and residential care.

For a significant number of people, if you die then it is a direct financial benefit to the UK, because they have had all the money they can out of you, and you are now just a selfish cost taking away money from everybody else.

2004 version published today:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 10642.hcsp

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Pain, grief and suffering? After watching this government and the Safety Camera Partnerships in action, I must be due thousands of pounds in compensation!!! Who do I sue, and when will the cheque arrive?

Seriously, if those figures were correctly arrived at, then we could all sue the BBC for showing us the results of the tsunami, or the 7/7 bombings!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

There are about 350 deaths a year on the railways, what cost it that.

Also much of the cost is covered by insurance companies.

Its political cobblers.

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Speed camera policy Kills