Road deaths on the rise – why speed isn’t to blame
Sean Carson examines the case of rising deaths on the UK’s roads and says why speed isn’t the determining factor
By the_roadtester 11 hours ago
*
Share
49
*
*
*
* 203
*
*
*
In 2011, 1,901 people tragically lost their lives in road traffic accidents – the first annual increase in fatalities on the UK’s roads since 2003 and a 3% increase over 2010.
A further 23,122 people were seriously injured, marking a 2% rise over 2010 figures and staggeringly, the first time the toll has risen since 1994. So what’s to blame for the upsurge in serious and fatal smashes?
Increase in road deaths ‘should be wake-up call'
Well, it’s not speed. That’s not to say speeding doesn’t directly correlate with accidents, but the point is it’s not the three-headed sole driver of deaths it’s often purveyed to be.
27% of blokes aged between 17 and 19 are involved in a road collision
Rather, it’s education that makes the difference. Sorry to bombard you with stats, but they illustrate the point quite nicely: in 2010 there were 283 fatalities among car occupants aged between 16 and 25. Concurrently, 27% of blokes aged between 17 and 19 are involved in a road collision within the first 12 months of passing their test.
Transport Committee data proves that this age group is the most vulnerable, and its education – or lack there of – that’s to blame. Drivers aren’t taught to drive these days, they’re taught to pass their driving test. It was the same for me.
Young motorists aren’t drilled as to the importance of knowing how to drive to the conditions – speed might be indirectly related here, but it’s arguably not gratuitous use of it. Instead, it’s the lack of knowledge and ability to assess the car, the surroundings and the conditions that is contributing towards the needless tally in the fatalities column.
Concentration levels can wane all too easily
On the subject of knowing your car, modern vehicles don’t help. Cars are so easy to drive nowadays that concentration levels can wane all too easily.
Sure, today’s Euro-boxes are safer than those of even 10 years ago, but if you’re not on your game at the wheel you’ve got less time to react – once you’re off the road the relative (marginal) safety improvements don’t matter.
Team that with the fact that there are more cars on the roads than ever today and you’ve got an environment conducive to collisions, simply due to the volume of traffic. Add in a lax attitude at the wheel and it’s not hard to see why death tolls continue to rise.
Are people aware that stopping distances double in the wet?
It’s not a cop out to explain the data either, but bad weather can play its part. This year’s summer has gone down the drain with the rest of the torrential rain we’ve been experiencing, but it can seriously affect safety on the roads.
Are people aware that stopping distances double in the wet? It returns to the education of drivers again – and we’re not just lobbying this at the young. Modern rubber is good and so are today’s safety systems, but they’re not wholly preventative crash measures.
You have to employ some common sense and knowledge behind the wheel. Often older drivers forget that too, having held a licence for years without incident.
Speed is a problem, but it’s not the be all and end all. If you educate better, speed will naturally come down. The Government needs to show more leadership to stop needless road deaths.
|
|
Your post about increasing road deaths seems to imply that during learner driver training young drivers are not educated about the basics such as:-
Use of speed-making progress when safe to do so, holding back when not safe.
Stopping distances increasing with speed and the effect of wet roads on stopping distances.
And in general you said that the government needs to show more leadership to stop needless road deaths.
Absolutely correct, the government does need to do more, and has been strongly advised by the driver training establishment on many occasions to consider graduated licensing, whereby the current driving test pass would become just the entry qualification to driving. The government has recently rejected this out of hand and has, as we all know, instead gone down the route of authorising local authorities to meddle with speed limits as a sop to the speed kills-brigade-a total cop-out.
|
|
3% increase. Doesn't mean much without stating what the natural variation in year-on-year results is. Besides, the accident rate can't keep declining indefinitely, however nice would be.
|
|
|
|
|
Doesn't surprise me, not one little bit. It ain't rocket science either.
Everyone's looking too far down the road for the latest bloomin' speed camera, average speed camera above them, or flippin' council van parked up to photagraph them in a bus lane!
So they're not looking at the road.
Too busy covering their back (which is probably in front, if you understand)
So cyclists, pedestrians, and children had better watch out.
|
|
Unthrottled, the accident rate will fall and could do so pretty well indefinitely Those days are coming but it won't be the the driver making the difference.
|
|
Even with ever-increasing safety standards, basis statistics will show that year-on-year falls cannot be expected indefinitely and that occassional increases do occur because everything is subject to Standard Deviation.
Like the GCSE results which always rise year-on-year, proving they get fiddled or the exams become easier then expecting road casualties to be constantly downwards would suggest the figures are being massaged.
The figures need examining in detail, as they should be every year, to see if identifiable patterns are visible which can then be tackled directly.
Edited by RT on 19/07/2012 at 09:44
|
|
|
|
Trilogy-
I assume that you are referring to automated driving devices. Look, it has been technically possible to build self-driving cars for at least 20 years. Demonstrations of cars driving themselves round test tracks are ten a penny. However, you won't see this technology filtering through to the road because:
-drivers don't want to cede control
-OEMs don't want the lifelong liability
-automated driving algorithmns do not interact well with human drivers.
Technology can't cure everything-although i know how much you like breathless advertorials promising brave new worlds.
|
|
|
|
|
Totaly agree
The real deterant a real live police car with educated police officers is a very rare sight in the UK.
|
|
|
|
|
Without wanting to sound too much like a Hang-em-and-flog-em retired Major... the population of this country is increasing at a rate twice the UE average. Immigration is around 250,000 a year, and that's the ones they know about. The latest census figures confirm a rise, however other estimates put the population of GB at 70 - 80 million :
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/city-eye-facts-on-a-plate-our-population-is-at-least-77-million-395428.html
I'm sure there must be other factors but you can't just keep increasing the population of a small overcrwoded island by a million every 4 years and not get an impact on the roads.
|
Agreed - there has to be a minimum number of KSI's say even due to people suddenly dropping dead whilst driving with no other factors involved.
It's absurd to think that this relatively trivial amount of ksi's (compared to a the vast number of road journeys undertaken each year) can be reduced by some magic bullet.
Politicians telling fools exactly what they want to hear.
|
|
In perspective:
deaths from alcohol abuse are over 4 x road deaths..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16738405
|
|
yeah, well the good news is road deaths are now at less than 2,000 a year, but add in the Seriously Injureds and you've still got a heck of a lot of people getting smashed up every year.
|
|
grimep, at least airbags etc are lessening injuries.
|
|
Didn't we go through this a while ago? The fact it increased in 2011 from an all time low in 2010 means nothing. The 2011 figures are still far lower than figures from 2009.
|
|
Yes, but "a surge in road traffic deaths" makes a better news story than "road deaths not quite at an all time low".
|
|
Im surprised the death rate isnt a lot higher than it is,so many drivers taking stupid risks in places they shouldnt, speeding is out of hand,its about time we had more police on the road ASAP
|
speeding is out of hand,its about time we had more police on the road ASAP
Where do you live? I find the roads blocked by kerb crawlers. I'm sure they're not literally kerb crawling butthey may as well be!
|
I find the roads blocked by kerb crawlers. I'm sure they're not literally kerb crawling butthey may as well be!
Me too. I'm sick of driving everywhere (that isn't the motorway) in 3rd gear due to these creepers.
|
|
|
To be honest unthrottled you're probably boring enough to buy a newspaper featuring the latter headline.
|
I've paid for articles far more boring than that Jamie. I like boring headlines; you're never disappointed with the article.
How often have you been caught out by a headline in the local rag "Milton keynes rocked by wave of gun crime" only to find that it actually refers to a group of scallies shooting out street lights with an air rifle?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
My take on the issue is this:-
Primarily a 2-3% variance from one year to the next is statistically insignificant unless part of a trend over several years. The analogy with exam grades isn't quite the same as (as many of us beliebe, IMHO) they've been fiddled with to pretend they're getting better. Road deaths are easily covered up given the publicity they generate;
I would say that, if proved as an increas over a number of years, then an increase in road deaths/injuries could be attributable to:-
- A larger population (immigration) - what would be significant is if the proportion of accidents/deaths increased compared to the overall population;
- A possible reduction in driving standards, possibly (partly) due to a) more foreign drivers from countries whose driving standards/attitudes to driving are lower than the UK and/or b) drivers generally (especially the young) getting into bad habits from watching "cool" people on TV (reality TV and actors) driving badly and getting away with it (e.g. driving using mobile phones, aggressive/too fast for the conditions driving, etc);
- The recession - people are likely cutting back on all their spending, including on motoring, which may include not having servicing/repair work done until something actually breaks, or changing tyres when the are nearly bald [or not at all], rather than 2-3mm (at least)/5 years (the rubber compund can deterirate/go brittle). This would undoubtedly make their cars less roadworthy and could increase the severity of accidients. People could also be more tired (physically and/or mentally) from working longer days or in more stressful situations (e.g. cannot leave a bad job), which could easily affect their driving style or ability;
- The change in driving styles of younger women. This is not a sexist comment - younger men have always been generally aggressive and poor drivers compared to the everyone else, but I have noticed that younger women, often now owning more high-performance cars (Mini Coopers, etc), are starting to ape the bad driving habits of the young men - the rise of the "ladette";
- Less traffic police patrols, and more emphasis/money spent on speed enforcement, rather than driving appropriately for the conditions (better).
Finally, I think I see much more "ordinary people" on the road with what most would call "sports cars" than 10-15 years ago (including hot hatches) - I doubt if most have had any extra training in being able to handle a car with twice (or more) BHP than they learnt in or were previously driving for years. The cheap cars from the early - mid 2000s are now also finding their way onto the second-hand market for relatively low prices, and it seems many (especially the young) are still prepared to pay high insurance premiums to get their "dream car".
Edited by Engineer Andy on 22/07/2012 at 14:35
|
|
Is there anything that cannot be attributed to immigrants?!
I think the notion of declining driving standards is nonsense. More than half of drivers would consider themselves better than average-they can't all be right. I generally have a negatiove opinion of a lot of driving I see-but I would stop short of calling it inherently unsafe.
The proportion of accidents attributable to mechanical failure is very low-so I don't think that poor maintainance is a major issue.
I'm convinced that the horsepower of a car is totally irrelevant to the likelihood of crashing. 40hp will get you to 80mph. Crash at 80 and you will die. The fact that sporty cars are staistically more likely to have accidents is simply due to the fact that risk takers gravitate to these cars. But it is as easy to wrap a Fiesta 1.1 Popular around a tree as it is a Subrau WRX. I think this is a classic example of people looking for correlations in data and drawing an erroneous conclusion.
I just don't see this aggressive driving that I hear people moaning about. I see very selfish driving (pulling out of a parking space and making people who have priority wait seems to be increasingly common). But I don't think this is unsafe. I've been overtaken maybe twice in the last 6 months.
I wonder if the recession is making people averse to braking. I know when I used to hypermile, I often carried far too much speed into corners in a bid to preserve momentum. Ooh! Do we have an argument for a cut in fuel duty on safety grounds?!
|
Just because the figures are up, doesn't mean we need to jump to conclusions as to why.
Next year they might go down. The figures need to be monitored over a five year period at least and then if the trend is up year on year, things need to be addressed. One years figures will be an excuse for the taxers and bureaucrats to bestow regulations and fines galore on the motorist. Best to wait.
And as for the tragic loss of 1,901 souls, sad as it is, considering the population is now around the 60 million mark, does that not seem so bad! Some mathematical genius on here can surely turn that into a percentage.
|
Just because the figures are up, doesn't mean we need to jump to conclusions as to why.
No but we can made educated guesses rather than an earlier poster who came over all Daily Mail ish and blamed the immigrents. For instance the Department for Transport claim there was a 2% reduction in traffic levels in 2010 which just happened to be when we recorded the lowest amount of deaths on record. Co-incidence? Hardly. It therefore stands to reason if those 2% get back out on the road then road deaths will rise back towards pre 2010 levels.
And as for the tragic loss of 1,901 souls, sad as it is, considering the population is now around the 60 million mark, does that not seem so bad! Some mathematical genius on here can surely turn that into a percentage.
1,901 is about 0.003% of the population. The fact is 1,901 is nothing. Nearly 160,000 people died from circulatory diseases in the same year, over 140,000 from cancer and 5,000 from parasitic diseases. Nearly 4,000 people died from falling on or off of something.
Its about time we put the 1,901 in context. Its nothing.
|
|
Just for the record, I wasn't "blaming immigrants" for the rise in road deaths - I was merely pointing out that a) the population had risen over the period throught immigration (therefore a larger pool of drivers to start with) and b) that some countries where a percentage of these people (legitamately) come from have very poor drving standards.
I'm not saying the UK has great driving standards (I think we've got worse over the past 20-30 years - I think its car safety features that has led to the reduction up to 2010), but you only have to look at documentaries showcasing life in poorer countries (often where there are no driving tests or lower testing standards than in Europe) - India being the one that's most mentioned - to show that some "bad driving habits" can take a long time (if at all) to be removed.
In response to the mention about the large difference in road deaths compared to illness (heat disease, cancer, etc), it's worth noting that (if I recall from reading it somewhere) each road death costs well in excess if 1m (on average) to the economy (disruption to traffic, more fuel used, cost of emergency services, and of course the loss of earnings due to the death itself), probably more so now. This is especially true if it happens on a major motorway. Sad though any death (whether motoring-related or not) is, some have more impact on society than others.
|
I'm not saying the UK has great driving standards (I think we've got worse over the past 20-30 years -
We're up there with Sweden and Holland as having the safest drivers in the world. However, the driving test is becoming increasingly standardised across Europe so the gap may start to diminish. There's no evidence of a decline in driving standards-and plenty of evidence to say that driving standards have improved. Driving standards are like crime; the public perception is that they are getting worse, when in reality they are getting better.
But the roads are much busier than they used to be, so the effect of bad driving is more noticeable.
|
We're up there with Sweden and Holland as having the safest drivers in the world.
Actually we're a reasonable way ahead of Holland. Only Sweden has a better road safety record than the UK if you discount a few tiny islands with one car on them. What I do agree with Andy on is the impact of car safety features. In the 1970's it was common place for 5-7k people to die on the roads yearly and when you consider the lighter traffic compared to today that's a huge number. I think airbags and the seatbelt law has done a lot more to get that number down than speed limits and 'traffic calming.'
Evidence suggests driving standards in the UK are very high, every statistical data batch I have shows we are the second best in the World in terms of safety. That doesn't mean driving standards are actually high though, I see examples of bad driving every single day but I don't see crashes and deaths which is what's actually recorded.
|
|
Some excellent answers here, the govt will be most upset as some are not reading from the correct hymnsheet.
The level of traffic has indeed increased dramatically in line with the fantastic and unsustainble increase in the population, obvious to anyone that accidents will rise, thats quite without the increased risk from drivers used to different road use.
One poster above also put into words something i've been saying for years, when you spend half your time looking for hidden and camouflaged taxation points, you ain't looking for the things you should be.
|
|
The confusing thing about speed cameras is they don't really make much money. To put it in perspective, they usually raise well over £100million a year in fines but after costs the actual profit to the Camera Partnerships is about £20million. The rules are they either re-invest that into more cameras or they hand it over to the Government. Now £20million is nothing, that's the yearly income tax from about 8 high paid Premier League footballers.
Some speed cameras even run at a loss.
So if they don't make any money, what are they for?
|
|
I suppose the 'costs' are essentially salaries. The people operating them think they're very useful!
|
|
Apologies if I have missed it but it seems no one has mentioned the mobile phone. I followed someone this morning who was all over the road. It was blatantly obvious they were texting or doing something else with a phone, iPad, Blackberry (delete as appropriate). This is common, extremely dangerous but relatively unpunished.
A work colleague who has recently been "done" for using a mobile has stated it will make no difference as he will still use it while driving! Taught him a lesson eh!
|
|
Texting while on the move is daft but I have no problem with those who send an email on the blackberry while sitting at traffic lights. They're sat still after all.
The mobile phone law here is a bit weird because its an offence to just hold it in your hand, but there's no law to say you can't drive along holding a frying pan or a DVD player. In America it can be even more bizarre, there's zones (usually around schools) which have signs saying things like 'no cell phone use monday to friday between 9-10am and 4-5pm' and by the time you've read that you've crashed!
|
|
