Safe Speed Forums

A comment about wet summers vs dry ones for motorcyle deaths made me wonder whether weather has a big part to play in the number of deaths per year on the roads. V hot weather will lead to more people being out on the roads and therefore more congestion and more frustration. I have noticed in baking heat drivers are much more impatient as they want to get moving to let cold air into the car (air con is a safety feature ) so they will take more risks. Do the peaks in accidents correlate in any way with good summers and bad winters? Could you use weather forecasts to predict likely accident rates?

I can predict that on the morning of the first good frost of winter, someone will run off the road along my morning route to work. The usual place is along a narrow B road called Neachley lane, or at a sharp left turn at the end of said lane (where you would turn right to enter the Cosford museum site). They usually slide staright ahead and colide with vehicles on the other side of the road, or hit the fence post.
Blimey, does this frosty white stuff mean I have to take more care when I'm driving? Well bugger me

The summer of 1976 was pretty amazing...

Fatals from 1970 to 1980 ran as follows:

1970 7499
1971 7699
1972 7763
1973 7406
1974 6883
1975 6366
1976 6570
1977 6614
1978 6831
1979 6352
1980 6010

So there's nothing there for us.

here are the motorbike figures:

1970 761
1971 800
1972 729
1973 750
1974 797
1975 838
1976 990
1977 1182
1978 1163
1979 1160
1980 1163

So nothing really obvious there either, unless the summer of 1976 caused a load of folk to take up biking.

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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

To explore the idea a bit further, 1975 in Paul's fatal figures was quite a bit lower than 76 and much lower than 74. A drop of more than 500 from 74 to 75, and a rise of neraly 200 from 75 to 76. Was there anything extraordinary about 1975 that could explain that drop, or even explain some of it? Or is this misleading since there was a similar decrease from 1973 to 1974? Looking at those figures I get the feeling that something happened between 1973 and 1974 to improve things, but by 1978 it had risen back up to 6831 before going back down again. Or am I trying to read something into a random variation that simply isn't there? Wouldn't be the first to do that, would I?

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

It's the oil crisis. Kept us off the roads for a few years.

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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

<smacks head> Duh. Well, my excuse is that I was about 4 at the time.

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

If I remember correctly 1975 and 1976 were long hot summers and this could explain increase of bikers

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Stupid is as Stupid does

I think one of our most charming eccentricities in Britain is the general delusion that we live in a Mediterranean country. We appear to be constantly amazed by every occurance of rain, fog, wind, snow, sleet, hail and most other kinds of inclement weather, as if such things shouldn't happen here at the Equator. Conversely, we strip off to shorts and bikinis the second the sun peeks out, regardless of the fact that it's February.

The unfortunate corollary of this otherwise harmless delusion is that, when confronted by compelling evidence of our non-tropical status, many of us simply choose to ignore it. Nowhere is this more true than on the roads. People drive in thick fog, lashing rain and blinding snow as if the hazards just don't exist. Snow tires and chains are objects of myth and legend, they don't exist in the real world. Fog lights are only used on clear days to show that you're really a rally driver. What's the point of using them in fog, when nobody can see how cool you look anyway?

The situation is made worse by the fact that the emergency services and road authorities share our delusion. There is only one snowplow in the British Isles, and it's on permanent duty in the Hebrides. Why should it be otherwise, since we live in a country where it never snows? Why provide adequate drainage on roads when it never rains?

I wonder ... perhaps the three day week of 1972 and 1979 (winter of discontent) also played parts in this too. Pderhaps there was also a perception that a bike used less fuel ... certainly seem to remember lot of my pals switching to motorbikes in '79 anyway....

As for the weather ..... seem to recall 75/76 as very hot (was on A levels the putrid smell of a thawing rat from my Biology practical seems to be quite vivid in my memory ... one girl passed out in the exam room from the stench .....

Think May of 77 was hot, and summers up to 79 were a bit wet.... because of some student labouring job on a construction site at the time ... this seems to be etched in my memory....as it was hard labour .....and every photo taken of mates at the time ... rainy weather

From 79-80 ... that's when we started to see more significant improvements in car designs in safety terms, and introduction of safety belt legislation in 82 seemed to have continued to downward trend .... until cops disappeared and scams arrived .....

And as far as can recall 84/85 and 88 were very warm on aggregate ... which I judge from a quick flick through an old photo album, and rest were so-so....

Winter probably does matter.
On a graph showing the number of deaths on Canadian roads on a monthly basis it struck me people killed in traffic year after year drops every winter to a level about a third of a summer month.
Swedish data (1956 -> 2001) on a monthly basis show an average July or August is 50% more deadly than an average February or March.
Even Belgian winters seem some 15% more safe than Belgian summers.

Might (at least) partly explain why Scandinavian countries are more safe in traffic than Mediterranean.

I don't know about that. (Belgian) statistics on traffic density show absolutely no trend change in total sum of vehicle miles nor in total amount of vehicles on the road in the years 1972 up to 1977.

From 1972 to 1977 -> + 30% in total sum of vehicle miles, and + 25% in total amount of vehicles on the road, both in a straight line of +6 and +5% per year respectively.

Hmm We bikers get a hard time but since there were "only" 600 or so bikers killed last year and that was an increase over the year bfore I think we've done quite well reducing the casualties by close to 50% since 1980.

The OPEC oil crisis was in 1973, and up to that point, petrol cost about 35-40p/gallon, depending on region. In December '73, it was almost impossible to buy petrol in the south London area, as retailers waited for the inevitable price rise and windfall profit on their existing stocks.

Feb 74, the price passed 50p/gallon. March 74 - the Conservatives went out, and the vehemently anti-motorist Labour party came in. VAT on petrol went to 25% - just before the price of crude was about to rise anyway. When it did, causing an 8p/gallon rise in the price of petrol, there was also an additional 2p/gallon payable in VAT. There were other price rises, and the year finished with petrol costing about 75p/gallon - almost double what it had been a year earlier. I think this might have deterred some motorists!