Safe Speed Forums

Having seen virtually all of my local area covered in speed humps and reduced to 20mph zones, I wrote to the local council and got the accident figures for the area in question.
Without boring you with reams of figures, I thought the following summary would be informative:

For the period in question (Jan 2002-Dec 2004) there were106 accidents.

These resulted in 1 killed, 16 seriously injured, and 124 slightly injured.
(NOTE: if someone suffers a minor injury e.g. a bump on the head but is detained in hospital overnight for observation, this is classed as "serious").

The incidents can be categorised as follows:

pillion fell off motorcycle- 1
vehicles racing-1
drove into parked vehicle-2
driver "distracted"- 2
driver dazzled-2
driving on pavement-2
pulling away from kerb-3
head-on-3
drunk driving-4
reversing-4
opening vehicle door-4
tailgating-6
unknown-6
driver lost control-9
stepped into road-9
whilst turning-18
failed to give way-28

Don't appear to have much to do with speeding, do they?

Add these up, and it comes to 104. So, what about the other 2?
They were both on buses- one was a passenger who lost his grip and fell off the bus as it pulled away from the stop, the other was a passenger whose arm was trapped by the doors as they closed !!!!

And these are included in the figures which are used to justify speed humps (and, no doubt, cameras).

The single fatality happened when (apologies, johnsher) a cyclist whizzed along the pavement, then decided to cut across the road without looking and caused a 4-car pile-up. He won't do it again. Ever.

Oh, and one of the head-ons was a police vehicle in pursuit of a moped.