ABD press release re KSIs compared to hospital figures
Discussion
ABD Press Release said:
The real stats show government road safety policy up a blind alley
Figures from Oxford University researchers show that, despite millions spent backing the 'kill your speed' policy, the UK's roads are not getting safer.
A report, entitled "Changes in Safety on England's Roads" shows clearly that road safety campaigns focussing almost solely on speed have failed to deliver. Where Police statistics have shown reductions in crashes, more reliable hospital admission figures show that road safety has flatlined - just as many people are being hurt today as in the early 1990s.
Mark McArthur-Christie, the ABD's director of Policy, commented "The real figures tell the truth - and tell it clearly. Despite millions spent on humps, calming, cameras and campaigns our roads are not getting safer. Simplicity, soundbites and political expediency have been allowed to dictate a road safety policy that is more concerned with legality than safety."
Road safety policy in the UK has focused since the early 1990s on "speed kills - so kill your speed". Cameras have proliferated, as have lower limits, humps, bumps and calming. The ABD believes these have not delivered results because they focus on the wrong things.
McArthur-Christie continues, "These figures show we need finally to acknowledge that safe driving is about so much more than speed. What about observation? What about anticipation? What about hazard management? We need thinking, trained and educated drivers and road users, not simply ones who believe that speed limit compliance is the pinnacle of driving-skill achievement."
The ABD believes that, rather than imposing more and more external controls on drivers, the only way to safer roads is to ensure that control are internal. In other words, to train, educate and inform road users.
Figures from Oxford University researchers show that, despite millions spent backing the 'kill your speed' policy, the UK's roads are not getting safer.
A report, entitled "Changes in Safety on England's Roads" shows clearly that road safety campaigns focussing almost solely on speed have failed to deliver. Where Police statistics have shown reductions in crashes, more reliable hospital admission figures show that road safety has flatlined - just as many people are being hurt today as in the early 1990s.
Mark McArthur-Christie, the ABD's director of Policy, commented "The real figures tell the truth - and tell it clearly. Despite millions spent on humps, calming, cameras and campaigns our roads are not getting safer. Simplicity, soundbites and political expediency have been allowed to dictate a road safety policy that is more concerned with legality than safety."
Road safety policy in the UK has focused since the early 1990s on "speed kills - so kill your speed". Cameras have proliferated, as have lower limits, humps, bumps and calming. The ABD believes these have not delivered results because they focus on the wrong things.
McArthur-Christie continues, "These figures show we need finally to acknowledge that safe driving is about so much more than speed. What about observation? What about anticipation? What about hazard management? We need thinking, trained and educated drivers and road users, not simply ones who believe that speed limit compliance is the pinnacle of driving-skill achievement."
The ABD believes that, rather than imposing more and more external controls on drivers, the only way to safer roads is to ensure that control are internal. In other words, to train, educate and inform road users.
I awoke this morning to this in my inbox. The referenced BMJ article is here: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidp
It's dynamite! The article states:
BMJ article said:
BMJ, doi:10.1136/bmj.38883.593831.4F (published 23 June 2006)
What is already known on this topic
It is government policy in England to reduce substantially the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads
Non-fatal serious injuries reported through the police fell substantially from 1996 to 2004
What this study adds
The reduction in non-fatal road traffic injuries reported in police statistics probably represents an increase in under-reporting of these injuries, or a reduction in minor injuries, or both
Hospital statistics show that there has been no appreciable reduction in injuries that are serious enough to warrant hospital admission
What is already known on this topic
It is government policy in England to reduce substantially the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads
Non-fatal serious injuries reported through the police fell substantially from 1996 to 2004
What this study adds
The reduction in non-fatal road traffic injuries reported in police statistics probably represents an increase in under-reporting of these injuries, or a reduction in minor injuries, or both
Hospital statistics show that there has been no appreciable reduction in injuries that are serious enough to warrant hospital admission
In summary therefore, the government is getting its required statistics from the police but the NHS is not confirming them. To me, that indicates that there's some politically motivated accident reporting going on in the police, presumably driven top-down from political chief constables who want to be seen to be delivering on their targets (which I guess also translate into bonuses and even honours).
In short, this is nothing more than a nationwide scam. It should drive questions in the House, headlines in newspapers, and serious investigations as to the motives of the police.
After working to get this story in the Daily Express today on an exclusive basis, Safe Speed issued the following PR at 23:46 yesterday evening:
PR327: BMJ paper reveals that DfT is not fit for purpose
news: for immediate release
In the current issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) is an article
comparing Department for Transport (DfT) statistics for serious road injuries
with hospital statistics for serious road injuries. The DfT statistics show a
substantial year on year improvement but the hospital figures show no
improvement whatsoever for a decade.
This means that DfT has a very big problem. After ten years of increasingly
draconian policy the roads have not got safer.
Research from Oxford University, published in the British Medical Journal [1],
has found that Hospital admission statistics for road crash victims have
remained at the same level since 1996. SAFE SPEED PREDICTED THIS FINDING by
analysing road crash statistics and published in early 2004. [2]
In complete contrast, DfT statistics have been claiming a year on year
reduction in Killed and Seriously Injured (KSI) road casualties. KSI is
dominated by the serious injury statistics because the number of serious is
around ten times greater than the numbers killed. DfT policies and DfT targets
are set and measured in KSI, but the new research is very strong evidence that
KSI is not a reliable series.
This means that DfT targets and policies are founded on figures that are wholly
unreliable - and even worse - independent figures show no improvement
whatsoever resulting from DfT policy.
But that's not the end of the story. It still gets worse because we know that
major road safety drivers are continuing to deliver improved safety. These
include:
* Ongoing improvements in vehicle safety, with over 2 million safer vehicles
replacing old ones in the national fleet every year.
* Ongoing improvements in road engineering safety, including new bypasses,
black spot treatments and the transfer of vehicles to safer roads such as
motorways.
* Ongoing improvements in post crash emergency care.
These three drivers alone are sufficiently large and important to result in
reductions in deaths and serious injuries of around 5% per annum even after
taking full account of the growth in traffic.
But now we know that we have seen no reduction in hospital admissions and only
very slight falls in road deaths since 1996. Far from making the roads safer,
DfT policies have misunderstood the nature of road safety and have made the
situation considerably worse.
DfT have used their Killed and Seriously Injured figures for all of the
following:
- To set road safety targets
- To measure achievements against targets
- To evaluate interventions including speed cameras
The new research indicates that THE ENTIRE BASIS for DfT policy and target
evaluation is flawed and meaningless. The DfT's figures are going down, but
they DO NOT represent a genuine improvement in road safety. Instead the changes
in the figures are caused by variations in the degree of underreporting.
The Hospital figures are far more robust with each entry the result of a
medical decision about patient treatment.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Department for Transport (DfT) has a dangerously
oversimplified view of road safety. Despite over a decade of ever-increasing
speed controls the roads have not got safer. My extensive research reveals that
DfT policy is making drivers worse. We're spending far too much time
concentrating on the wrong safety factors - and DfT is responsible."
"I've know for three years that the serious injury statistics were behaving
very strangely in relation to other road safety indicators. The only possible
conclusion was that changes in the figures were an artefact of the reporting
process. The new BMJ paper provides very strong additional evidence."
"If road safety had continued to improve at the previous rate (before 'speed
kills' road safety policy, national road deaths would be down to about 2,000
per annum by now. We're 1,200 live a year behind target and I an certain that
bad policy is responsible."
"Department for Transport road safety is not fit for purpose."
<ends>
Notes for editors
=================
[1] New BMJ paper:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidp
[2] Safe Speed page on problems with the serious injury stats:
www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html
DfT are aware that their figures may be 'dodgy' see:
www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/downloadable/dft_transstats_038554.pdf
contains (page 3):
"Research conducted in the 1990s has shown that many non-fatal injury accidents
are not reported to the police. In addition some casualties reported to the
police are not recorded and the severity of injury tends to be underestimated.
The combined effect of under-reporting, under-recording and misclassification
suggests that there may be 2.76 times as many seriously injured casualties than
are recorded in the national casualty figures and 1.70 slight casualties,
according to TRL Report 173 Comparison of hospital and police casualty data: a
national study by H F Simpson. The Department is undertaking further research
to investigate whether the level of under-reporting has changed."
PR327: BMJ paper reveals that DfT is not fit for purpose
news: for immediate release
In the current issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) is an article
comparing Department for Transport (DfT) statistics for serious road injuries
with hospital statistics for serious road injuries. The DfT statistics show a
substantial year on year improvement but the hospital figures show no
improvement whatsoever for a decade.
This means that DfT has a very big problem. After ten years of increasingly
draconian policy the roads have not got safer.
Research from Oxford University, published in the British Medical Journal [1],
has found that Hospital admission statistics for road crash victims have
remained at the same level since 1996. SAFE SPEED PREDICTED THIS FINDING by
analysing road crash statistics and published in early 2004. [2]
In complete contrast, DfT statistics have been claiming a year on year
reduction in Killed and Seriously Injured (KSI) road casualties. KSI is
dominated by the serious injury statistics because the number of serious is
around ten times greater than the numbers killed. DfT policies and DfT targets
are set and measured in KSI, but the new research is very strong evidence that
KSI is not a reliable series.
This means that DfT targets and policies are founded on figures that are wholly
unreliable - and even worse - independent figures show no improvement
whatsoever resulting from DfT policy.
But that's not the end of the story. It still gets worse because we know that
major road safety drivers are continuing to deliver improved safety. These
include:
* Ongoing improvements in vehicle safety, with over 2 million safer vehicles
replacing old ones in the national fleet every year.
* Ongoing improvements in road engineering safety, including new bypasses,
black spot treatments and the transfer of vehicles to safer roads such as
motorways.
* Ongoing improvements in post crash emergency care.
These three drivers alone are sufficiently large and important to result in
reductions in deaths and serious injuries of around 5% per annum even after
taking full account of the growth in traffic.
But now we know that we have seen no reduction in hospital admissions and only
very slight falls in road deaths since 1996. Far from making the roads safer,
DfT policies have misunderstood the nature of road safety and have made the
situation considerably worse.
DfT have used their Killed and Seriously Injured figures for all of the
following:
- To set road safety targets
- To measure achievements against targets
- To evaluate interventions including speed cameras
The new research indicates that THE ENTIRE BASIS for DfT policy and target
evaluation is flawed and meaningless. The DfT's figures are going down, but
they DO NOT represent a genuine improvement in road safety. Instead the changes
in the figures are caused by variations in the degree of underreporting.
The Hospital figures are far more robust with each entry the result of a
medical decision about patient treatment.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Department for Transport (DfT) has a dangerously
oversimplified view of road safety. Despite over a decade of ever-increasing
speed controls the roads have not got safer. My extensive research reveals that
DfT policy is making drivers worse. We're spending far too much time
concentrating on the wrong safety factors - and DfT is responsible."
"I've know for three years that the serious injury statistics were behaving
very strangely in relation to other road safety indicators. The only possible
conclusion was that changes in the figures were an artefact of the reporting
process. The new BMJ paper provides very strong additional evidence."
"If road safety had continued to improve at the previous rate (before 'speed
kills' road safety policy, national road deaths would be down to about 2,000
per annum by now. We're 1,200 live a year behind target and I an certain that
bad policy is responsible."
"Department for Transport road safety is not fit for purpose."
<ends>
Notes for editors
=================
[1] New BMJ paper:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidp
[2] Safe Speed page on problems with the serious injury stats:
www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html
DfT are aware that their figures may be 'dodgy' see:
www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/downloadable/dft_transstats_038554.pdf
contains (page 3):
"Research conducted in the 1990s has shown that many non-fatal injury accidents
are not reported to the police. In addition some casualties reported to the
police are not recorded and the severity of injury tends to be underestimated.
The combined effect of under-reporting, under-recording and misclassification
suggests that there may be 2.76 times as many seriously injured casualties than
are recorded in the national casualty figures and 1.70 slight casualties,
according to TRL Report 173 Comparison of hospital and police casualty data: a
national study by H F Simpson. The Department is undertaking further research
to investigate whether the level of under-reporting has changed."
This is dynamite. Unless the ABD are cherry picking favourable quotes, the fact that an otherwise impartial and respected body as the NHS is questioning road safety policy has to be a big problem for the "speed kills" lobby. A hearty "oh no it doesn't" from the NHS! Brilliant.
The spin on this one is likely to make you dizzy though.
The spin on this one is likely to make you dizzy though.
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