Safe Speed Forums

It seems the DfT "snuck out" a report on excessive speed accidents about two weeks ago. I've just found it and had a quick read. It's here:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 031459.pdf

Critical statements include:

"The term excessive speed can be interpreted as meaning either excessive for the conditions / location or exceeding the speed limit. It is not possible to differentiate between these two aspects."

"To examine the role excessive speed plays in pedestrian accidents, the proportion of excessive speed accidents was calculated for (i) accidents precipitated by and involving a pedestrian casualty, and (ii) accidents precipitated by a vehicle but involving a pedestrian casualty. Table 10 shows how, compared with other accidents, the percentage of excessive speed accidents is lower for both types of accident involving a pedestrian casualty."

"Table 11 shows the percentage of fatal and all accidents precipitated by or involving a pedal cyclist casualty that were attributable to excessive speed. Once again one finds that excessive speed is cited as a contributory factor in a smaller proportion of accidents compared with accidents not involving a pedal cyclist casualty."

It is also highly notable that the proportion and the numbers of excessive speed accidents is tending to increase.

They don't have anything to say about whether excessive speed was the first, second, third or fourth contributory factor. (They are supposed to be ranked in order of importance, so a load of CF4s would be far less significant than a load of CF1s.)

They don't have anything to say about the other contributory factors present in their excessive speed accidents. One assumes, therefore, that excessive speed was frequently CF2 or CF3 with "drunk" or "reckless" or something in the CF1 position.

I shall study it some more.

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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

Having read it again I notice that no reference is made to the "confidence" coding either.

Contributory factors gathered over the peiod in question were all supposed to be given a confidence factor of: "possible", "probable", or "definite".

One assumes that the possible and the probables are simply lumped together to bask in the reflected glory of the definites.

I feel a letter coming on.

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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

Speaking to a traffic officer, i know.

They are now finding it almost impossible to determine the vehicles speed.

In history this was done by measuring skid marks etch.

This is no longer available, with ABS being fitted as standard cars no longer lock up wheels, hence do not provide skid marks.

Speed estimates, have nothing to base their theory's on.

Most new cars are built with crumple zones, to collapse away from the cockpit area upon impact. So damage is not an indicator either.

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Steve

Following up on what bmwk12 said, the 'causation' factor, usually noted at the scene of an accident, is also based on opinion, not necessarily fact. You're relying on a road-side officer being able to determine what caused a collision.

The causation factors currently don't allow much scope for accurate depiction and recording of an incident. However, I have good information which suggests that this may be due to change with the number of causation factors available for police to record incidents set to increase significantly.

Are the DfT/Police going to start basing statistics on accurate information?

The same opinion problems will remain - but then we're always going to have to rely on opinion aren't we?

The new system is rolling out now and is live and national on 1st January 2005. It'll be late 2006 before we actually see any results from it.

The new system has some tweaks and improvements, but remains very much a "TRL323 style" system, like the one that produced the stats in this thread. I'm happy that no better system exists - TRL323 is quite brilliant actually.

The most important tweak is the inclusion of separate codes for inappropriate speed and exceeding a speed limit.

I would like to see a more detailed system, filled in at a much later stage, for fatal accidents. Fatal accidents are well investigated, but the results of those investigations are not collated. That's a real shame because it would be by far the most accurate source of info.

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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

Efforts are under way involving suppliers, Police authorities etc in various regions to provide a more effective syste to allow better collation of statistics.

I have to agree - I would like to see far more information presented based on the outcomes of Fatal Collision accident investigations.

I would also like to see more statistics produced from insurers - to cover those incidents the police don't even turn up to.