My ambition to kill 4,000
Discussion
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1290114,00.html
Nick Ross
Wednesday August 25, 2004
The Guardian
Driving is all about freedom and fun, while road safety is for spoilsports and interfering busybodies. We all know that. You can picture the people it attracts: vicars' wives, prim suburban nerds, the sort who wanted horseless carriages to be preceded by a man with a red flag. Safe is dreary.
So when, in a BBC canteen in the 1980s, I accepted a dare to construct a TV programme out of the dullest, most worthy subject my colleagues could think of, after only the briefest of huddles they chose road safety.
But my despair was short-lived. I soon discovered what a battlefield it was out there, an unrelenting production line churning out more than 6,000 corpses every year; yet, as one academic put it, there were solutions lying around just waiting to be picked up. The resulting programme was almost pornographic in its violence, opening with the entire population of Wallingford in Berkshire lying in the town streets to represent the annual cull, and followed by human dummies smashing into dashboards, life-like plastic babies hurtling through windscreens, wild-eyed volunteers experiencing the terror of a simulated crash, and all amid the showered, twisted and bloody debris of real accidents and real victims with screaming ambulances, silent mortuaries and the dismal knock on a door in the night as the police arrived to tell a wife and mother that she was now a widow.
The anger of the film was restrained by the expertise: the highways engineers who explained how roads could be realigned, the academics who showed how vehicles could be modified to avert a collision or absorb the energy of a crash or be less murderous when meeting a pedestrian, the epidemiologists and statisticians who demonstrated how seat belts and helmets could save many lives. Never mind BBC neutrality, the programme, in effect, proposed that most of the dead and injured were not the result of accidents so much as the consequence of commercial indifference and public policy.
I won my wager. The programme was a hit. I was invited to address the Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers, where I proposed they set a target to kill 4,000 (rather than 6,300) by the year 2000. To my surprise they instantly agreed. Emboldened by this, I urged the government to do the same. Most politicians in office would have recognised that there are no votes in road safety, but I was invited to the Department of Transport to face an army of advisers and inquisitors. To my astonishment, the government agreed.
Well, not quite. No one would accept my ambition to "kill 4,000" by the turn of the millennium (a deliberate reference to the causal rather than accidental nature of the carnage), but they did agree to save 2,300 lives, which amounted to the same thing.
It soon turned out that the academics and engineers had been right: when the solutions were picked up, with very little noticeable restraint on motorists' freedoms, the death toll started to fall rapidly. We overshot the target substantially after 50 years of crushing, stabbing, burning and bleeding to death well over 6,000 people annually, managing to kill only 3,400 in the year that brought the 20th century to a close.
I have learned two lessons: how powerful and suffocating fatalism can be ("with millions of people in millions of vehicles you're bound to have that many accidents"), and how liberating and magnificent human ambition can be.
Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. A few drivers, egged on by one or two irresponsible journalists, are in denial about the laws of biology that govern human reaction times, and the principles of physics that dictate vehicle stopping distances. They delude themselves that speed is not a factor in accidents and that enforcement is too strict. They even convince themselves that the police are motivated by money rather than safety and have campaigned to undermine traffic-calming measures. The government has panicked and, without reliable scientific evidence about the consequences, caved into demands to paint traffic cameras yellow. The tide of complacency may sweep back in, and we may return to killing on a grander scale.
I have no quarrel with that, provided killing is what society wants to do. But let no one claim the deaths are accidental. Transport is intrinsically risky. Let's decide how risky we want it to be and adjust things accordingly. We can decide our own destiny.
· Nick Ross is a broadcaster and council member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists. This article is written in support of Transport 2000's campaign to make roads safer for all users
www.transport2000.org.uk
Or try; www.jibblers.plus.com/t2000/
>>> Edited by cazzo on Wednesday 25th August 23:09
Nick Ross
Wednesday August 25, 2004
The Guardian
Driving is all about freedom and fun, while road safety is for spoilsports and interfering busybodies. We all know that. You can picture the people it attracts: vicars' wives, prim suburban nerds, the sort who wanted horseless carriages to be preceded by a man with a red flag. Safe is dreary.
So when, in a BBC canteen in the 1980s, I accepted a dare to construct a TV programme out of the dullest, most worthy subject my colleagues could think of, after only the briefest of huddles they chose road safety.
But my despair was short-lived. I soon discovered what a battlefield it was out there, an unrelenting production line churning out more than 6,000 corpses every year; yet, as one academic put it, there were solutions lying around just waiting to be picked up. The resulting programme was almost pornographic in its violence, opening with the entire population of Wallingford in Berkshire lying in the town streets to represent the annual cull, and followed by human dummies smashing into dashboards, life-like plastic babies hurtling through windscreens, wild-eyed volunteers experiencing the terror of a simulated crash, and all amid the showered, twisted and bloody debris of real accidents and real victims with screaming ambulances, silent mortuaries and the dismal knock on a door in the night as the police arrived to tell a wife and mother that she was now a widow.
The anger of the film was restrained by the expertise: the highways engineers who explained how roads could be realigned, the academics who showed how vehicles could be modified to avert a collision or absorb the energy of a crash or be less murderous when meeting a pedestrian, the epidemiologists and statisticians who demonstrated how seat belts and helmets could save many lives. Never mind BBC neutrality, the programme, in effect, proposed that most of the dead and injured were not the result of accidents so much as the consequence of commercial indifference and public policy.
I won my wager. The programme was a hit. I was invited to address the Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers, where I proposed they set a target to kill 4,000 (rather than 6,300) by the year 2000. To my surprise they instantly agreed. Emboldened by this, I urged the government to do the same. Most politicians in office would have recognised that there are no votes in road safety, but I was invited to the Department of Transport to face an army of advisers and inquisitors. To my astonishment, the government agreed.
Well, not quite. No one would accept my ambition to "kill 4,000" by the turn of the millennium (a deliberate reference to the causal rather than accidental nature of the carnage), but they did agree to save 2,300 lives, which amounted to the same thing.
It soon turned out that the academics and engineers had been right: when the solutions were picked up, with very little noticeable restraint on motorists' freedoms, the death toll started to fall rapidly. We overshot the target substantially after 50 years of crushing, stabbing, burning and bleeding to death well over 6,000 people annually, managing to kill only 3,400 in the year that brought the 20th century to a close.
I have learned two lessons: how powerful and suffocating fatalism can be ("with millions of people in millions of vehicles you're bound to have that many accidents"), and how liberating and magnificent human ambition can be.
Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. A few drivers, egged on by one or two irresponsible journalists, are in denial about the laws of biology that govern human reaction times, and the principles of physics that dictate vehicle stopping distances. They delude themselves that speed is not a factor in accidents and that enforcement is too strict. They even convince themselves that the police are motivated by money rather than safety and have campaigned to undermine traffic-calming measures. The government has panicked and, without reliable scientific evidence about the consequences, caved into demands to paint traffic cameras yellow. The tide of complacency may sweep back in, and we may return to killing on a grander scale.
I have no quarrel with that, provided killing is what society wants to do. But let no one claim the deaths are accidental. Transport is intrinsically risky. Let's decide how risky we want it to be and adjust things accordingly. We can decide our own destiny.
· Nick Ross is a broadcaster and council member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists. This article is written in support of Transport 2000's campaign to make roads safer for all users
www.transport2000.org.uk
Or try; www.jibblers.plus.com/t2000/
>>> Edited by cazzo on Wednesday 25th August 23:09
Yup, we're onto a real winner with the "speed kills" policy.
That's why there were nearly 100 more people dead on the roads in 2003 than there were in 1998, despite the millions spent on cameras, calming and lower limits.
I wish it was as simple as "kill your speed", but it's not - it's SO not.
That's why there were nearly 100 more people dead on the roads in 2003 than there were in 1998, despite the millions spent on cameras, calming and lower limits.
I wish it was as simple as "kill your speed", but it's not - it's SO not.
MMC said:
Yup, we're onto a real winner with the "speed kills" policy.
That's why there were nearly 100 more people dead on the roads in 2003 than there were in 1998, despite the millions spent on cameras, calming and lower limits.
I wish it was as simple as "kill your speed", but it's not - it's SO not.
Don't knock the bloke completely. It appears that for a long time improvements in vehicle engineering, road design and engineering, and driver/pedestrian/road-user education have made a huge difference.
Job well done!
We can even see that advancements in enforcement and public attitude have helped. Look at drink driving - once commonplace - now regarded as socially unacceptable - and what made it possible to enforce? The "breathalyser" - that little green bag you couldn't argue with (now electronic).
Excellent.
Even speed cameras can be used to encourage motorists to slow down prior to an accident blackspot. Brightly painted, vividly signed - and with the threat of punishment if you don't "take the advice on offer" they may discourage some nutters from flying into blind corners or dodgy crossroads that couldn't be road-engineered for some reason.
The problem with the cameras is that they're not used like that. If they were nobody would object. 20% of drivers wouldn't have points on their licence - it would be the rueful few.
Where the road-safety industry went wrong was first to allow Forces to keep the revenue from speed enforcement and then, worse, the creation of the SCPs with their profit centres, offices, vehicles, nice well-paid office jobs for civil servants and so on.
They need to be disbanded immediately and replaced with Trafpol - and the Force, sorry "service" pah(!), should not be keeping the money or set targets. Let the coppers nick the people who deserve it and let the rest of civilised, decent, law-abiding society get on with the business of getting from A to B.
Are we, or most of us on here, in danger of portraying a 'don't care about casualties' attitude in our desire to see camera enforcement reduced or eliminated.
If so, then we must be failing to portray our true feelings correctly.
Very few would accept that removal of all speed limits outside built-up areas would be either sensible of acceptable. Surely a move towards sensible limits would be right, but that if these sensible limits were then policed more rigidly who could complain (oh, some would).
In Ross's article he did mention a variety of measures to reduce deaths and really majored on vehicle and highway engineering.
Of course, speed, whether excessive, irresponsible or downright stupid, is the cause of a percentage of casualties and the means of minimising this factor will have to be considered along with the other factors. The choice so far is more and more cameras, but these have had little effect other than to ensure that millions of drivers now have points on their licences. So what does that tell us? Maybe it tells us that speeding in excess of the speed limit is acceptable to most drivers, and that any casualties as a result of that are acceptable as a trade off to making progress on a journey. That is certainly the perception of the 'Speed Kills' brigade.
With the current volume of traffic we must have rules and regulations and speed limitation is just a part of that.
The big criticism is that successive governments are looking for ways to achieve road safety 'on the cheap'. Cameras were, initially, seen as a way of achieving this. It has clearly not worked as numbers killed have levelled off and now increased.
Is this due to the cameras, or to the perceived ability of reducing manned police patrols as 'P.C. Gatso' took over roads policing from real live officers?
Speaking personally, my feelings are that cameras are here to stay. They won't make much difference to road safety, but they will enforce an absolute law in an absolute manner and continue to be seen as 'cash-collection' units by Mr. Average. If we don't want to risk getting banned we can either comply with the limits or take countermeasures.
Society is evolving and road traffic and its control will evolve with it. Not everyone will like this, but it's something we all have to live with. Technology can and will control driving habits increasingly as tracking and monitoring systems evolve.
We are not going to stop this and the best we can and should do is to strive for sensible limits, pragmatically enforced with common sense and a human understanding. Of course, we can and should press for the other aspects of road safety which our claimed experience and aptitude tells us would be appropriate such as better driver training, re-testing at, say, 60-65 years old, eyesight tests every 5 years, etc, etc.
If so, then we must be failing to portray our true feelings correctly.
Very few would accept that removal of all speed limits outside built-up areas would be either sensible of acceptable. Surely a move towards sensible limits would be right, but that if these sensible limits were then policed more rigidly who could complain (oh, some would).
In Ross's article he did mention a variety of measures to reduce deaths and really majored on vehicle and highway engineering.
Of course, speed, whether excessive, irresponsible or downright stupid, is the cause of a percentage of casualties and the means of minimising this factor will have to be considered along with the other factors. The choice so far is more and more cameras, but these have had little effect other than to ensure that millions of drivers now have points on their licences. So what does that tell us? Maybe it tells us that speeding in excess of the speed limit is acceptable to most drivers, and that any casualties as a result of that are acceptable as a trade off to making progress on a journey. That is certainly the perception of the 'Speed Kills' brigade.
With the current volume of traffic we must have rules and regulations and speed limitation is just a part of that.
The big criticism is that successive governments are looking for ways to achieve road safety 'on the cheap'. Cameras were, initially, seen as a way of achieving this. It has clearly not worked as numbers killed have levelled off and now increased.
Is this due to the cameras, or to the perceived ability of reducing manned police patrols as 'P.C. Gatso' took over roads policing from real live officers?
Speaking personally, my feelings are that cameras are here to stay. They won't make much difference to road safety, but they will enforce an absolute law in an absolute manner and continue to be seen as 'cash-collection' units by Mr. Average. If we don't want to risk getting banned we can either comply with the limits or take countermeasures.
Society is evolving and road traffic and its control will evolve with it. Not everyone will like this, but it's something we all have to live with. Technology can and will control driving habits increasingly as tracking and monitoring systems evolve.
We are not going to stop this and the best we can and should do is to strive for sensible limits, pragmatically enforced with common sense and a human understanding. Of course, we can and should press for the other aspects of road safety which our claimed experience and aptitude tells us would be appropriate such as better driver training, re-testing at, say, 60-65 years old, eyesight tests every 5 years, etc, etc.
I just wish people would get a bit of perpspective.
3000 a year. Out of 60 million people.
In the same time around 40,000 dead from NHS. : http://blog.ctrlbreak.co.uk/archives/000206.html
Diy kills 4000 a year : www.dti.gov.uk/homesafetynetwork/
4000 people die from falls each year. Lets pad all sharp corners, and wrap everyone in bubble wrap.
And that just the accidental deaths.
The REAL killer : Smoking kills 112,00 people a year : www.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/fact02.html
So how much is spent on preventing this by the goverment ? less than cost of one "safety camera" ?
And why is that ? Because they themselves are addicted to the tax cash ?
3000 a year. Out of 60 million people.
In the same time around 40,000 dead from NHS. : http://blog.ctrlbreak.co.uk/archives/000206.html
Diy kills 4000 a year : www.dti.gov.uk/homesafetynetwork/
4000 people die from falls each year. Lets pad all sharp corners, and wrap everyone in bubble wrap.
And that just the accidental deaths.
The REAL killer : Smoking kills 112,00 people a year : www.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/fact02.html
So how much is spent on preventing this by the goverment ? less than cost of one "safety camera" ?
And why is that ? Because they themselves are addicted to the tax cash ?
I've said in another thread, that not all accidents involving drink drivers were actually caused by the driver being drunk - I wonder how many accidents don't happen every year and how many kids aren't killed when they run intothe road just after a speeding car has passed, that if it had been travelling at the 30 mph speed limit would have arrived on the scene just that much later and in perfect time to mow the child down and kill it?
Now before everybody jumps on me for saying that, I'm not saying we should all do 80 mph in 30 limits! What I am saying is the speed is not neccessarily the cause of the accident... even at 30 mph, the timing can be such that even the most aware driver with the worlds fastest reflexes will simply not have time to brake or turn the wheel before he hits and kills a kid who has dashed straight out into the road from behind a hedge or wall.
So what is the cause of such an accident? Irresponsible parents? How many drivers have to live with the fact they have killed a kid, despite that they were doing nothing wrong and it wasn't their fault. Something should be done to drum it in to parents to look after their kids properly, and perhaps in instances where it is proved that an accident is not the fault of a driver, the irresponsible parents, grieving over a dead child or not, should be prosecuted, named and shamed!
I'm sure there are many other causes of accidents too that could be takled in a similar way.
Now before everybody jumps on me for saying that, I'm not saying we should all do 80 mph in 30 limits! What I am saying is the speed is not neccessarily the cause of the accident... even at 30 mph, the timing can be such that even the most aware driver with the worlds fastest reflexes will simply not have time to brake or turn the wheel before he hits and kills a kid who has dashed straight out into the road from behind a hedge or wall.
So what is the cause of such an accident? Irresponsible parents? How many drivers have to live with the fact they have killed a kid, despite that they were doing nothing wrong and it wasn't their fault. Something should be done to drum it in to parents to look after their kids properly, and perhaps in instances where it is proved that an accident is not the fault of a driver, the irresponsible parents, grieving over a dead child or not, should be prosecuted, named and shamed!
I'm sure there are many other causes of accidents too that could be takled in a similar way.
Horrific sensationalism.
It would seem that like so many issues pertaining to freedoms which are predominantly assumed, massively convenient and fundamentally associated with the furtherment of man, the control freakish tendancy of the (let's be frank) 'anti-car lobby' invariably bubbles forth, on a pretext which is as contextually tenuous as it is grossly oversimplified.
The alleged link between speed (per se) and fatalities is ascribed to the vast swelling of the auotmobilised population: it 'causes' these tragic figures quoted in the article.
Figures that presumably didn't exist in the halcyon days of...well, let's see...oh yes, rampant industrial injury and death that underpinned Britain's economic power house for 150 years from the late eighteenth century.
In other words, physical peril attributable to the pursuit of anything that ever involved the action of getting out of bed and travelling into the world of physical chaos in order to further life itself.
We're talking about risk and the acceptable level society is prepared to tolerate.
The problem here, is the confusion wrought by sensationalism and guilt projection for some nefarious political end, that confuses the debate and biases what might otherwise be objective review.
In other words, it's the position of desiring better standards of driving rather than continually dumbing down the experience because muppets, rather than Jedi Knights, hold the whip hand in Blighty '04.
Remember, in the old eastern bloc, you made do with a Lada Riva because that was what the Kremlin goon squad told you to make do with.
Well, Comrade Ross's mindset is indicative of the thin end of the wedge; unconsciously, perhaps but in effect, most certainly.
Stand by yer cannons, gents, only girls fight with swords these days.
It would seem that like so many issues pertaining to freedoms which are predominantly assumed, massively convenient and fundamentally associated with the furtherment of man, the control freakish tendancy of the (let's be frank) 'anti-car lobby' invariably bubbles forth, on a pretext which is as contextually tenuous as it is grossly oversimplified.
The alleged link between speed (per se) and fatalities is ascribed to the vast swelling of the auotmobilised population: it 'causes' these tragic figures quoted in the article.
Figures that presumably didn't exist in the halcyon days of...well, let's see...oh yes, rampant industrial injury and death that underpinned Britain's economic power house for 150 years from the late eighteenth century.
In other words, physical peril attributable to the pursuit of anything that ever involved the action of getting out of bed and travelling into the world of physical chaos in order to further life itself.
We're talking about risk and the acceptable level society is prepared to tolerate.
The problem here, is the confusion wrought by sensationalism and guilt projection for some nefarious political end, that confuses the debate and biases what might otherwise be objective review.
In other words, it's the position of desiring better standards of driving rather than continually dumbing down the experience because muppets, rather than Jedi Knights, hold the whip hand in Blighty '04.
Remember, in the old eastern bloc, you made do with a Lada Riva because that was what the Kremlin goon squad told you to make do with.
Well, Comrade Ross's mindset is indicative of the thin end of the wedge; unconsciously, perhaps but in effect, most certainly.
Stand by yer cannons, gents, only girls fight with swords these days.
seems a long time since I have read an example of your prose 
desrestrictor.
basically agree. Ross's job depends on him taking a complex and logical issue and attaching a trivialised emotive soundbite angle to it. As is much of mass media these days media these days - they create as well as respond to public prefernce.
However, in the balance he does quite well but loses credibility with re-iterating the anti-speed soundbites
desrestrictor. basically agree. Ross's job depends on him taking a complex and logical issue and attaching a trivialised emotive soundbite angle to it. As is much of mass media these days media these days - they create as well as respond to public prefernce.
However, in the balance he does quite well but loses credibility with re-iterating the anti-speed soundbites
Ah, the Grauniad....don't you just love it?
Look here....scroll to Friday 13th August for a crack at Toynbee Tantrums....
www.greenspin.blogspot.com/
Look here....scroll to Friday 13th August for a crack at Toynbee Tantrums....
www.greenspin.blogspot.com/
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