Safe Speed Forums

There's no official estimate of the proportion of serious crashes caused by 'rogue drivers'. I reckon it's a high percentage, but need some help in preparing an estimate.

In 2005, according to DfT, 63 child pedestrians were killed on our roads.

The project is to trawl the net for press reports to try to find out how many of those 63 were killed by 'rogue drivers'. (Note that I'm talking about 2005 - the year before last.)

Obviously we could do some collaborative work via the forums, but someone will need to build some sort of database, with references to press reports to enable verification.

"Rogue drivers" will include: those driving stolen cars, disqualified drivers, underage drivers, uninsured drivers (maybe?), drunk drivers, extreme reckless behaviour.

I reckon it's something like 40 or 50 hours work. Can anyone help?

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Paul Smith
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The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I can't believe they don't collect data on whether the driver was uninsured/banned or whatever. I suspect they do know, or suspect it will be a very high proportion which is why they don't.

It's probably too large for one person to trawl for. I'd suggest dividing it into a few areas eg Scotland, Wales & N & S England to reduce the size of the task.

If you knew what fields you wanted I could probably make a database and come up with a simple web form to submit the data to ( assuming I'm signed off again this week).

I shall also investigate whether I can host subdomains on my vps so that it would be possible to use some of the tools I have access to and make it easy to do collaboration without you having to mess around and install things. You'd only have to change dns entries to add the subdomain and point it at my server if it were possible

Would the coroner's court not record if the driver was 'rogue'?

Interesting snippet on traffic cops that was on a few weeks ago. According to them 20% of all drivers involved in fatals were under the influence of drugs. This suggests that drug driving is far more prevalent than drink driving. Question is, are the drugged and otherwise illegal drivers an inclusive or exclusive figure?

Figures won't be collected as there will be a lot of underreporting going on for a start. If uninsured drivers have 10X the accident risk then what is the likelihood they be more likely to crash with another uninsured driver so they'll both keep stum?

Would it not be much easier to let the public have access to the insurance database so they could a) check their own vehicle was classed as insured and b) check on others and then flag them up as being local to them and needing investigation? Having everyone that is insured checking up on other people would stop the idea that uninsured drivers can hide. It would also reduce the possibility of mis-registration of vehicles. You could even do it without notifying the person that checked it was uninsured for anonymous checks. If the same registration was being checked a few times then it suggests lots of people think that person is driving without insurance.

I do think it is time to admit defeat and add insurance costs to fuel and then really go after the banned, criminal and dangerous drivers. Unfortunately the prisons are full so they probably will only get a slap on the wrist

Whilst looking, I found this rather interesting study. Hope it's of some use.

http://www.orsa.org.uk/guidance/pdfs/in ... idents.pdf