RE: Bad roads policy causes deaths
Monday 27th February 2006
Cameras haven't workedNew official EU road safety figures (see link to report, below) show that Britain is now the poor man of Europe in terms of road death reduction.
Bad roads policy causes deaths
Cameras aren't improving road safety: EU report
Cameras haven't worked
Safe Speed campaign founder Paul Smith said that, although Britain's roads are safer than most of our European neighbours, this has been inherited by modern policy, and that policy "is failing to deliver improvements. So we have safe roads and bad policy. In fact we have gone from hero to zero in about a decade."
Between 1994 and 2004, the EU 15 countries cut road deaths by 39 per cent, with Britain lagging behind, 13th out of 14 countries with figures available. If we had done as well as --say -- Germany, Smith said that British annual road deaths would be down to 2,266 instead of 3,368.
"We're over 1,000 lives a year behind schedule. This estimate is echoed by an extrapolation of our own earlier trend in fatality rate reduction, and is a serious failure that Safe Speed has long been highlighting.
"In the last four years (2001-2004) we have reduced road deaths by only six per cent against an EU average of 14 per cent. We're dead last -- 14th out of 14 countries (who have figures available)."
Smith said: "When will Department for Transport wake up and admit that their policies aren't working? All their talk about road safety targets amounts to nothing more than hot air. Lives are not being saved.
"I am absolutely certain, having spent thousands of hours examining road safety data, that our poor performance is due to bad policy, and that the bad policy is founded on 'speed kills' and speed cameras. There is so much more to road safety than numerical vehicle speed.
"The knowledge and the cultural values that gave us the safest roads in the world are being lost. We must urgently scrap speed cameras and return to psychologically sound policies based on skills, attitudes and responsibilities."
Reductions in road fatalities from 1994 to 2004:
| Country | Reduction |
| Portugal | 48% |
| Germany | 40% |
| France | 39% |
| The Netherlands | 38% |
| Austria | 34% |
| Denmark | 32% |
| Greece | 28% |
| Luxembourg | 25% |
| Finland | 22% |
| Italy | 21% |
| Sweden | 19% |
| Spain | 15% |
| United Kingdom | 12% |
| Ireland | 6% |
| Belgium | NA |
| EU15 | 39% |
Reductions in road fatalities from 2001 to 2004:
| Country | Reduction |
| France | 32% |
| Luxembourg | 30% |
| Portugal | 23% |
| The Netherlands | 19% |
| Sweden | 18% |
| Germany | 16% |
| Italy | 16% |
| Denmark | 14% |
| Spain | 14% |
| Greece | 14% |
| Finland | 13% |
| Austria | 8% |
| Ireland | 8% |
| UK | 6% |
| Belgium | NA |
| EU15 | 14% |
Almost all of France's creditable improvements came before the first speed cameras were installed on French roads in November 2003. An increase in police traffic patrols and an emphasis on drunk driving are thought to be leading contributors. Germany's policy statement in the EU report specifically mentions management of road safety culture.
The British policy statement does not mention speed cameras or speed enforcement, which is strange because the average British motorist experiences very little else from road safety policy yet there sometimes seems to be a speed camera on every other street.
Safe Speed believes that road safety culture management is the single most important road safety policy device available.
Links
Discussion
Would love to hear from PHers in some of the other countries listed, regarding if their day-to-day experience on the road is improving, and how is their relationship with police and policy makers with relation to road safety.
It's getting very silly in the UK now, because none of our policy makers seem to have any intention of addressing the 'psychology' and the continuing education aspects of road safety, only (seemingly) arbitrary punishment.
It's getting very silly in the UK now, because none of our policy makers seem to have any intention of addressing the 'psychology' and the continuing education aspects of road safety, only (seemingly) arbitrary punishment.
_VTEC_ said:
Does that paint the whole picture though? Was there more scope for reduction in those other countries?
You certainly can't hope to 'paint the whole picture' on a single page. But I do think the information presented is accurate, illuminating and very important. We're entitled to much better policies.
safespeed said:
You certainly can't hope to 'paint the whole picture' on a single page. But I do think the information presented is accurate, illuminating and very important. We're entitled to much better policies.
agreed but lets not lower ourselves to the government's level of distorting statistics to suit their argument, even if yours is just and theirs is politicla hot air.
A 6% reduction of a small figure could be just as good as 32% of a crap figure - what are the absolutes as Ithoguth the UK record is extremely good v other nations (although this has nothing to do with speed cameras)
Preaching to the choir.
We all know that things are wrong, but we all also know that its very easy for the government to spin or simply ignore reports and documents that disagree with it's "speed kills" policy, simply because they are never forced to publically respond to them.
Until every report and finding like this is headline 6 o'clock news, the government can keep pretending they don't exist.
I for one am getting incredibly frustrated reading reports and evidence against speed cameras and the current "speed kills" attitude here, yet nobody outside of PH and the select few, seem to give a monkeys or even know!
Its about time there was a voice of authority willing to stand up and educate the masses on just how much our government is ignoring a patently flawed belief.
P~
>> Edited by PhantomPH on Monday 27th February 12:57
We all know that things are wrong, but we all also know that its very easy for the government to spin or simply ignore reports and documents that disagree with it's "speed kills" policy, simply because they are never forced to publically respond to them.
Until every report and finding like this is headline 6 o'clock news, the government can keep pretending they don't exist.
I for one am getting incredibly frustrated reading reports and evidence against speed cameras and the current "speed kills" attitude here, yet nobody outside of PH and the select few, seem to give a monkeys or even know!
Its about time there was a voice of authority willing to stand up and educate the masses on just how much our government is ignoring a patently flawed belief.
P~
>> Edited by PhantomPH on Monday 27th February 12:57
Adam B said:
You certainly can't hope to 'paint the whole picture' on a single page. But I do think the information presented is accurate, illuminating and very important. We're entitled to much better policies.
agreed but lets not lower ourselves to the government's level of distorting statistics to suit their argument, even if yours is just and theirs is politicla hot air.
A 6% reduction of a small figure could be just as good as 32% of a crap figure - what are the absolutes as Ithoguth the UK record is extremely good v other nations (although this has nothing to do with speed cameras)
Lies, damn lies and statistics
got plenty of them
UK was second best in Europe in 2003 (per 100,000), only just behind those wily Volvo driving Swedes. Greece perhaps unsuprisingly was the worst by a long shot.
(Source:www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen/irtad/utility/P118.pdf)
www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen/irtad/english/grafics.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/360
Lots of stuff in the WHO site, where most articles get their statistics from.
www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_traffic/statistics/en/index.html
Check out Chinas road toll 110,000 deaths
, and there was me thinking that South Africa's 12,000odd deaths was extreme. Even they admit it's mostly due to poor driving.
http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/20
got plenty of them
UK was second best in Europe in 2003 (per 100,000), only just behind those wily Volvo driving Swedes. Greece perhaps unsuprisingly was the worst by a long shot.
(Source:www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen/irtad/utility/P118.pdf)
www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen/irtad/english/grafics.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/360
Lots of stuff in the WHO site, where most articles get their statistics from.
www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_traffic/statistics/en/index.html
Check out Chinas road toll 110,000 deaths
, and there was me thinking that South Africa's 12,000odd deaths was extreme. Even they admit it's mostly due to poor driving. http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/20
Code Monkey said:
You certainly can't hope to 'paint the whole picture' on a single page. But I do think the information presented is accurate, illuminating and very important. We're entitled to much better policies.
agreed but lets not lower ourselves to the government's level of distorting statistics to suit their argument, even if yours is just and theirs is politicla hot air.
A 6% reduction of a small figure could be just as good as 32% of a crap figure - what are the absolutes as Ithoguth the UK record is extremely good v other nations (although this has nothing to do with speed cameras)
Guys, you're mistaken. We're looking at EXACTLY the right figures to see the effect of policy. Check our this further/supporting PR issued earlier today:
PR293: The poor man of Europe: Further information
Notes for editors:
==================
Yesterday's important Safe Speed PR concerning UK road fatalities failing to
fall making us the 'poor man of Europe' has not received the press pickup that
it deserves.
See: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SafeSpe
Several enquiries from journalists reveal that this may be due to limited
understanding of the meaning of the values.
FACT: The greatest purpose of road safety policy is to reduce road deaths.
FACT: We expect a constant rate of reduction in risk values expressed as a
percentage. Technically this is 'exponential decay' and has the 'law of
diminishing returns' built right in to precisely the correct degree.
FACT: The rate of reduction of risk values in the UK falls far behind that
expected, and far behind that achieved in most European countries.
FACT: With the UK's history of excellence in road safety we should still be
leading Europe not trailing behind.
FACT: The figures issued yesterday by Safe Speed are based accurately on a new
official EU report.
FACT: So far there has been no known press coverage of this new report.
FACT: Present policy inherited excellent road risk values and is failing to
improve them.
FACT: We have ongoing improvements in vehicle engineering safety, roads
engineering safety and post crash medical care. With NO intervention from
policy we would STILL expect road deaths to continue to fall. The fact that
this isn't happening is evidence of a massive policy failure making matter
worse despite the ongoing technical benefits.
FACT: The growth in traffic is nowhere near enough to account for the loss of
trends.
***
NEWS: for immediate release
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "We have more or less the safest roads in the
world, but present policy is tending strongly to make them more dangerous.
Despite ongoing improvements in vehicle safety, road engineering safety and
post crash medical care road deaths are not falling as expected."
"We are entitled to much better policy and much better results. Over two
million speed camera fines a year are making matters worse, not better. The
only evidence that counts is road deaths. We're over 1,000 lives per year
behind schedule and I am absolutely certain that policy is to blame.
<ends>
I think that quoting percentage reductions is potentially misleading.
The graphs on page 7 show the fatality rates by number of cars and by population, and the UK is at the lower end of the scale for both 2001 and 2004. Surely this must make a large percentage reduction harder to achieve than somewehre such as Portugal where the equivalent rates were and still are a lot higher
If I've understood the document properly, if we had the same 'death rate' as Germany a lot more people would die on our roads than do at the moment
That said, I've only skimmed it and I'm not a statistician, so no doubt someone can do a better analysis job than me and I'd be interested to hear what others think.
The graphs on page 7 show the fatality rates by number of cars and by population, and the UK is at the lower end of the scale for both 2001 and 2004. Surely this must make a large percentage reduction harder to achieve than somewehre such as Portugal where the equivalent rates were and still are a lot higher
If I've understood the document properly, if we had the same 'death rate' as Germany a lot more people would die on our roads than do at the moment
That said, I've only skimmed it and I'm not a statistician, so no doubt someone can do a better analysis job than me and I'd be interested to hear what others think.
Having read a bit more, there are a couple of good examples of government spin on page 43 -
EU Document said:If only that were really true - I could have sworn that 95%+ of the UK's focus is on speeding rather than on any of the other things mentioned
As for road users, the UK concentrates on training and testing. The British authorities focus also on issues such as alcohol, drugs and drowsiness. As far as road infrastructure is concerned, the priority is given to investments in the existing highway network.
Arquestian said:
Why is Belgium listed as "N/A" ?
Does this sum up the typical Begian driver?
report page 19 said:
Belgium.
Prior to 2001, road safety was not prioritised and Belgium had more fatalities per million inhabitants than the EU-25 and EU-15 average. According to the available provisional data for 2002 a slight decrease in the number of road fatalities was noticed.
>> Edited by njwc on Monday 27th February 13:56
njwc said:
I think that quoting percentage reductions is potentially misleading.
The graphs on page 7 show the fatality rates by number of cars and by population, and the UK is at the lower end of the scale for both 2001 and 2004. Surely this must make a large percentage reduction harder to achieve than somewehre such as Portugal where the equivalent rates were and still are a lot higher
That's really not right. Cutting deaths by 10% is 'equal difficulty' whether you start from 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000. By way of evidence look at the long term performance of our own fatal accident rate. From the earliest solid figures (1950) until the mid 1990's it fell by between 5 and 7% per annum with clockwork reliability. After the mid 1990s we see the effects of 'policy failure' and it gradually slowed, stoppped, and actually rose in 2003. There was a small fall in 2004, but early reports indicate another rise in 2005.
Anyway look at Holland and Sweden. Those countries have similar risk values to ours and they have done much better. We must be doing something wrong...
safespeed said:I'm not trying to start an argument but I'm not sure I entirely agree with you on this particular point.
That's really not right. Cutting deaths by 10% is 'equal difficulty' whether you start from 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000
Surely the '80-20 rule' or some deriviative of it must come into play sooner or later, ie when things are really bad its quite easy to get a reduction in KSI with a few simple measures, but as we get better at KSI reduction the improvements are more difficult to achieve and come more incrementally. Its a bit like (say...) trying to get fit, at first its quite hard, then you start to see large improvements quite quickly then as you get nearer to your possible 'peak' the rate of improvement slows down.
Thats not to say that we couldnt and shouldn't have done better or that I agree with the current policies, but if I was in Goverment, presented with this data, and wanted to make myself, look good I'd just say that we have one of the lowest actual deaths rates per head of population in Europe, therefore we cant be getting it wrong.
On the subject of Holland and Sweden , they started with the same rate as us but have now reduced it so surely this would make a better stick to beat the Goverment with than just the percentages ? Do you know why has their death rate per capita gone down whereas ours hasnt ?
>> Edited by njwc on Monday 27th February 14:38
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