Safe Speed Forums

Casualties down significantly on last year.(275kb pdf)

2003 Fatalities 3508
2004 Fatalities 3221

8.2% drop in fatalities, 8% drop in KSIs

Very impressive!

Hopefully a bit of 'catchup' from the miserable performances of previous years.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Well we are obviously wrong then and it is all about speed, it took a while for the message to get through, but current policy has obviously resulted in a massive reduction in accidents and accident severity.

So BRAKE et al were right after all - are you going to shut the campaign down Paul?

You'll forgive me if I don't quite see it that way.

If that was the case, then we would have significant reductions in their target groups, but child fatalities have only reduced by 3%.
Biker fatalities down significantly - poor summer weather last year.

And perhaps the Safe Speed / COAST message is getting across .

On that note, Well done In Gear and crew over in Durrum. 24% drop in fatalities there!! :clap:

Much more analysis of the stats still required though .

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Leicestershire up from 54 to 65.............
I can feel a letter to the newspaper comming on!

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Speed camera policy Kills

OOoops!

North Wales;

2003 - 49 fatalities
2004 - 58 fatalities

A rise of 18%!!

Lancs have trimmed back their draconian camera enforcement strategy.

Result?

2003 - 88 fatalities
2004 - 58 fatalities

A drop of 34%!!

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Safe Speed issued the following PR at 10:26 this morning:

PR208: Deaths down at last - a triumph of engineering over policy.

Figures released today by the Department for Transport (DfT) reveal a very
long awaited reduction in road deaths.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "The fall in road deaths is clearly a triumph of
engineering over policy. In fact bad road safety policy has been making our
roads more dangerous for over a decade. This welcome fall will undoubtedly be
attributed to policy, but since policy is substantially unchanged from last
year when deaths rose, that wouldn't make any sense at all would it?"

"Road safety in the UK is being mismanaged and widely misunderstood. The
modern emphasis on vehicle speeds is so wide of the mark that it would be
laughable if it wasn't so tragic. And 'tragic' is indeed the word, because if
former trends in road safety had continued throughout the speed camera decade
we'd be down to about 2,000 road deaths each year by now. We know we have
substantial and beneficial road safety gains going on, including:

* Improvements in vehicle safety (thought to make fatalities 4% less likely
each year as vehicle safety improvements ripple into the national fleet.)

* Improvements in road engineering (accident black spot treatments, and roads
development transferring traffic to better roads (e.g. bypasses)). A good
working estimate for the benefit of roads engineering is around 2% per annum.)

* Improvements in post crash medical care (thought to save more lives at the
roadside by about 1% per annum).

These benefits need to be offset against the growth in traffic currently
running at about 1.5% per annum.

I believe that we would see road deaths fall by between 5 and 7% per annum
with no 'policy intervention' at all - just as they did throughout the
seventies, eighties and early nineties. But deaths hadn't fallen for a decade
despite massive policy intervention (reduced speed limits and speed cameras
especially). This indicates with crystal clarity that the policy failed in
its stated purpose of saving lives."

Official road safety targets are based on 'Killed and Seriously Injured' (KSI)
figures. But it is widely known and acknowledged that the recorded serious
injury figures only roughly reflect road safety because there are large and
variable numbers of road injuries that are neither reported to the police nor
recorded in the statistics.

We note that road deaths are down in both the areas without camera
partnerships. Down in Durham (24%), and down in North Yorkshire (9%)
(both by more than the average change).

Road deaths were up by a shameful 18% in North Wales, where arch speed
camera proponent Richard Brunstrom is Chief Constable. Wales overall saw
road deaths rise by 16%.

<ends>


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

The new report "Road Casualties Great Britain (Main Results) 2004 is available
from:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 038554.pdf

Previous copies of the annual report are not available from the DfT web site.
We have gathered all copies from 1997 to 2003 inclusive:and posted them for
download:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/mainresults.zip

Information and analysis of changes in 'serious injury' figures.
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html

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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

Err, no.

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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

It's the COAST course (Guess who contributed to the design....one member of my own side of the family.... My now retired father... )

But they widened the course across the speed range - and issued letters at lower speeds as well. It works far better long term.

As for here... well - of course ... they got me of course Our worry area is .. bikers and we had a few less last year after targetting specifically (and perhaps helped a bit by "put-off weather")

But there are several reasons - poor summer meant less bikers and cyclists in general - and some roads were re-engineered - and of course better cars and I would like to think those stopped by us and given the COAST message are applying it. I also like to think that those who have read our COAST message here and elsewhere have taken some note of it too.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Only stirring...

But we all know that some people will just take the headline figures and use them as justification of their position

I will take it as good news this reduction in road deaths

Still it’s interesting to note the North Wales 18% increase despite the draconian enforcement of the “SPEED KILL” policy and wait to see what Brunstrom has to say about it.

Obviously there is a substantial element of year-on-year fluctation in the headline fatalities number - 2003 was an upwards blip, 2004 a downwards blip.

And over 100 of the reduction was due to a fall in motorcyclist casualties which has a lot to do with the weather.

A couple of other factors that could have a bearing:

1. Is there any evidence that the police are becoming more effective at catching and deterring unlicensed and untaxed drivers via ANPR, continuous registration etc?
2. In recent years there has been a marked reduction in the proportion of under-20s, and even under-25s, learning to drive. We may be doing more miles, but those miles are being done by the older and more experienced drivers

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I am sure that this fall will be credited to the scameras, the SCPs and the whole "speed kills" policy. A June 13th article on the fall of road deaths in Scotland credited "speed reducing campaigns" as if there could have been no other cause. I think we've just been very lucky this year, and if so odds are it'll come back to bite 'em in 12 months time when the 05 figures are out unless something substantial changes.

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

I have a question for the people that have the full report

Has the percentage off pedestrian/cyclists KSI changed?

Reason I am asking is I think it would be a good indicator of whether the reduction was due to the trend for bigger 4x4 type cars and the over all improvements in car safety.

If the percentage of the KSI pedestrians/cyclists has gone up all this reduction shows is vehicles are safer then ever and accident that would have killed 5 years ago people are walking away from unharmed.

Where as the pedestrian hasn’t changed and still a vulnerable as ever.

Now if the percentages haven’t noticeably changed it would tend it indicate the Roads them self’s are safer. It still debatable as to cause of the change as mentioned above and we should remind people that you need to look at road safety over a number of years not just one more so when the same policy lead to increases in the preceding decade.

Here you are biggerjohn:

Killed pedestrians down 13%
Seriously injured pedestrians down 5%
Slightly injured pedestrians down 4%
All pedestrian casulaties down 4%

Killed Cyclists up 18%
Seriously injured cyclists down 5%
Slightly injured cyclists down 2%
All cyclists casualties down 2%

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

Thank you but that not quite what i meant.

What i was asking is for every 100 people KSI what % where pedestrians or cyclists compared with previous years.

But thanks for the information

So us poor cyclists should be "in your thoughts" with 134 killed in 2004 compared with 114 in 2003. A worse summer in 2004, to boot. I wonder what the official explanation will be?

Okay biggerjohn, I'll have another go.
In 2003 & 2004 Ped casualties made up the following percentages of the total
K..........................22.06 and 20.83
SI.........................21.24 and 21.87
KSI.......................21.32 and 21.77
Slight....................11.24 and 11.12
All ped casualties...12.53 and 12.42

For cyclists it was:
K...........................3.25 and 4.16
SI..........................6.81 and 6.98
KSI....................... 6.48 and 6.72
Slight.....................5.77 and 5.82
All cycle casualties...5.86 and 5.93

Only info for 2003 and 2004 in that particular report. HTH.

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

i think every one will agree 3221 is still to many

It would have been a lot less if it wasn't for the one third lie and the subsequent obsession with speed camera enforcement.

In Leicester in 03 there was a drop in deaths. The SCP went into publicity overdrive claiming all the credit in the press. In 04 the death toll went back up again. SCP was totaly silent. This year the deaths are on a par with 04. The roadsafety policy is failing totaly with NO reducion in deaths since before the SCP was formed.

Then we have the complete stupidity over the driver busted for 11mph over the limit taking his wife to Hospital and subsequent embarassing climb down.

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Speed camera policy Kills

i