Safe Speed issued a PR the day the Stats came out:
Stats out at 09:40 on the 30th June. PR out at 10:26 on the 30th June.
PR208: Deaths down at last - a triumph of engineering over policy.
Figures released today by the Department for Transport (DfT) reveal a very
long awaited reduction in road deaths.
Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(
www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "The fall in road deaths is clearly a triumph of
engineering over policy. In fact bad road safety policy has been making our
roads more dangerous for over a decade. This welcome fall will undoubtedly be
attributed to policy, but since policy is substantially unchanged from last
year when deaths rose, that wouldn't make any sense at all would it?"
"Road safety in the UK is being mismanaged and widely misunderstood. The
modern emphasis on vehicle speeds is so wide of the mark that it would be
laughable if it wasn't so tragic. And 'tragic' is indeed the word, because if
former trends in road safety had continued throughout the speed camera decade
we'd be down to about 2,000 road deaths each year by now. We know we have
substantial and beneficial road safety gains going on, including:
* Improvements in vehicle safety (thought to make fatalities 4% less likely
each year as vehicle safety improvements ripple into the national fleet.)
* Improvements in road engineering (accident black spot treatments, and roads
development transferring traffic to better roads (e.g. bypasses)). A good
working estimate for the benefit of roads engineering is around 2% per annum.)
* Improvements in post crash medical care (thought to save more lives at the
roadside by about 1% per annum).
These benefits need to be offset against the growth in traffic currently
running at about 1.5% per annum.
I believe that we would see road deaths fall by between 5 and 7% per annum
with no 'policy intervention' at all - just as they did throughout the
seventies, eighties and early nineties. But deaths hadn't fallen for a decade
despite massive policy intervention (reduced speed limits and speed cameras
especially). This indicates with crystal clarity that the policy failed in
its stated purpose of saving lives."
Official road safety targets are based on 'Killed and Seriously Injured' (KSI)
figures. But it is widely known and acknowledged that the recorded serious
injury figures only roughly reflect road safety because there are large and
variable numbers of road injuries that are neither reported to the police nor
recorded in the statistics.
We note that road deaths are down in both the areas without camera
partnerships. Down in Durham (24%), and down in North Yorkshire (9%)
(both by more than the average change).
Road deaths were up by a shameful 18% in North Wales, where arch speed
camera proponent Richard Brunstrom is Chief Constable. Wales overall saw
road deaths rise by 16%.
<ends>
We didn't know at the time about the huge reduction in motorcycle miles.
And yes, it could well be a spike. It could also be because there's been some detail definition change. I've put in a FoI request to the DfT about that.
Unlike the previous year there's no obvious correlation between high camera areas and poor performance.
It's possible we've now reach the bottom of the bad policy damage slope and now engineering benefits are coming through again. But my personal bet on the main reason is a bad summer in 2004.