Safe Speed Forums

New DfT figures today. Safe Speed issued the following PR at 11:24:

PR443: Road deaths up as driver attitudes worsen

news: for immediate release

Provisional figures released by Department for Transport today reveal a very
worrying trend in road deaths, showing a 1% rise from 3,177 to 3210.

The figures are the quarterly provisional estimates for period ending Q3 2006.

Safe Speed estimates that road deaths should be falling by between 4% and 5%,
based on various engineering and medical gains. In order to offset this benefit
'something else' must be going badly wrong - and we know exactly what it is.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Road deaths should not be rising. We know we're
putting safer vehicles on the roads each year, we know we're improving the
engineering of crash black spots and we know we're getting better at post crash
care. The growth in traffic is nowhere near enough to offset these very
substantial gains."

"I know exactly what's happening - we have the wrong road safety policy and
it's making our drivers worse. Speed cameras and 'speed kills' policy is badly
affecting driver skills and especially driver attitudes."

"This is a crisis in road safety - we must get back to policies that value
skills and attitudes and we must have policies that effectively police the
growing 'rogue driver' problem."

"Trends in serious injuries continue to appear to show an improvement, but last
year the British Medical Journal found that road crash hospitalisation hadn't
fallen for a decade despite huge gains in the official 'serious injury'
statistics. This is ample evidence that the serious injury trend does NOT
represent a genuine improvement in road safety."

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

PLEASE don't allow DfT to 'gloss this over' It's REAL and it's VERY SERIOUS.

Today's DfT document:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/162259/162469/185 ... ?version=1

>From the following DfT page:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/da ... bqtr032006

Safe Speed PR on BMJ report:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SafeSpeedPR/message/181

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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

I assume these are figures for the 12 months to the date given and not numbers for just one quarter. I seem to think that there are about 3,000 fatalites per year on our roads.

_________________
Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Yeah. I said 'period ending'... I should have said 'year ending Q3 2006'.

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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

Having a quick look at the tables the total accidents figures have decreased, what is pushing the balance towards fatals?

Are there any stats for non-injury accidents?

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Paul, what was the figure last year, and how does this 1% rise measure against the overall trend?

Could it be a 'blip'?

Its the only figure they can't 'fudge'!

Pretty sure it's mainly damage to the Police public relationship reducing the level of reporting. We can't trust anything except the fatals for trend presently.



Nope. Insurance companies have them, but they are 'commercially confidential'.

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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

The 'proper' underlying trend is about a -4% or -5% ongoing annual reduction driven by engineering improvements.

The difference between 0% and 1% could be a blip, but a decade's underperformance couldn't be, and the difference between -5% and +1% isn't a blip - it's a disaster.

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

I bet in any PR road deaths are not mentioned. They now use KSIs which usualy make them look better...

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Speed camera policy Kills

Your thesis on bad policy may be correct. Based on the official data of people killed in traffic it looks like in 1994 - 1995 a sudden trend change to a worsening performance took place in the UK. What happened then?

Cameras basically... oh and abs and air bags all appeared. It can't be the ageing population which some are trying to blame now. Changes in the driving test around that time would also cause a step change. Not sure if there were any though.

When did the EU start fiddling with our road safety policy?

Does it?

After a month waiting for reply I guess the Eu does not.

no, I guess not

It may seem that collectively we know everything, but reality differs.

I guess no one knows when the EU stuck their oar in. I do know that they intend to take more and more control. We're really in a bit of a race to prove that UK policies are defective before there are no UK policies.

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