Safe Speed Forums

NB: This text was copied from PistonHeads - the current live page has been retooled to focus on the 4x4 report, which is mentioned at the very end of this one Typical BBC - focus on slamming 4x4's or report on proof of a possible government cover-up?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5107708.stm

Doubt cast on road safety claims

The government is aiming to reduce road crash death and injuries
Research has cast doubt on government claims roads are getting safer.
A study by Oxford University and a regional public health group found serious injuries caused by road crashes had not changed since the mid 1990s.

Latest figures show the government is on target to reduce road deaths and serious injuries by 40% by 2010 when compared to the mid 1990s.

But the Department for Transport said the British Medical Journal report was misleading.

The government is on track to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured by 40% and children by 50%

Stephen Ladyman, of the Department for Transport

Police figures, used by the government, show the numbers killed or seriously injured on England's roads has fallen by nearly a third from 86 per 100,000 to 59 per 100,000 from 1996 to 2004.

The majority of this fall has been driven by a 32% drop in injuries, the figures show.

But if hospital admissions are used, the number of serious injuries has remained largely stable. It was 90 per 100,000 in 1996 and 91 eight years later, the team from Oxford University and the South East Regional Public Health Group in Guildford said.

Lead researcher Dr Mike Gill said: "The discrepancies are likely to be down to under-reporting of accidents to police.

"But it raises questions about the police figures and I think it is important the government looks at the hospital figures."

Road Safety Minister Stephen Ladyman said the study was misleading as police figures were more accurate than hospital data.

"The government is on track to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured by 40% and children by 50%.

"This paper provides no evidence to believe otherwise."

Sleepy

Another report in the BMJ also strengthened the link between the risk of driving while feeling sleepy.

In a survey of 13,299 middle-aged drivers, researchers found people who drover while sleepy a few times year were 1.5 times more likely to be involved in a serious crash than those who did not drive while sleepy.

Those who said they drove while sleepy each month were nearly three times more likely to have an accident, the team from the Victor Segalen University in France said.

And a third BMJ report by Imperial College in London also said 4x4 drivers were more likely to flout mobile phone and seat belt laws.

They said 4x4 drivers probably took more risks because they feel safer in their vehicles than other motorists.

In total, the study of over 40,000 drivers found one in six did not where seatbelts.

Roger Vincent, of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: "While standards of driving are better in the UK than many countries, there are still too many people taking unnecessary risks on the roads. We must get better."

So if someone is hurt in a car accident, doesn't report it to the police and later requires hospital admission then the accident didn't happen?

Somehow I doubt that the police records are more accurate.

_________________
Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

The failure of serious crashes to reduce is something that I have long been certain of.

See http://www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html
and http://www.safespeed.org.uk/serious2.html

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Safe Speed issued the following PR at 13:59:

PR325: Serious road injuries not down means policy has failed

news: for immediate release

Apparently a recent study by Oxford University has found that despite Police
figures showing reduction in serious road injuries, when hospital figures are
used there has been no improvement since 1996.

This is EXACTLY as Safe Speed analysis of road crash trends has predicted.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "So now we see the truth. The roads are not
getting safer. Government road safety policy - supported only by dodgy
statistics has failed - and we can see it has failed."

"Speed cameras are at the centre of the failure and at the Safe Speed campaign
we know exactly how and why."

"The Department for Transport MUST immediately pull the plug on the failed and
dangerous speed camera programme."

"The government measure road safety and sets targets in 'KSI' - Killed and
seriously injured. The new data shows no improvement at all in KSI, despite the
proliferation of speed cameras and lower speed limits. Clearly these measures
are not delivering the safety improvements claimed and promised.

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

BBC Article with reference to new report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5107708.stm

Safe Speed analysis, first published in February 2004:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Where on Pistonheads?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Here: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topi ... 3&f=23&h=0

Here's the BMJ paper:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidpdf ... 1.4Fv1.pdf

This is 100% momentous. The roads have NOT got safer (as if we didn't know...) This is the PROOF.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

As the Government has a target figure for reduction of KSIs then this target WILL be met (by fiddling the figures). Just change the reporting criteria slightly ... This is so much easier than actually doing something useful. Achievement of the target is more important than the object of the exercise - anyone in government can tell you this.

_________________
Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

This is great news. The lies are starting to unravel. I had long debate with my local authority Road Safety Officer about the discrepancies between the fall in KSI bit not in fatalities. He said it was a nationwide trend. Now we know why! Obviously fatalities are more difficult to under report.

_________________
Speed camera policy Kills

The fact that injuries have stayed the same when cars have become significantly safer is even more of a concern. Safety should have improved by 5% year just from trend alone. If not, safety policy has clearly increased the injuries.

Absolutely, exactly.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

So who do WE believe, not the government spin, that is for sure.

After working hard to get this exclusively in today's Express, Safe Speed issued the following PR at 23:46 yesterday evening:

PR327: BMJ paper reveals that DfT is not fit for purpose

news: for immediate release

In the current issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) is an article
comparing Department for Transport (DfT) statistics for serious road injuries
with hospital statistics for serious road injuries. The DfT statistics show a
substantial year on year improvement but the hospital figures show no
improvement whatsoever for a decade.

This means that DfT has a very big problem. After ten years of increasingly
draconian policy the roads have not got safer.

Research from Oxford University, published in the British Medical Journal [1],
has found that Hospital admission statistics for road crash victims have
remained at the same level since 1996. SAFE SPEED PREDICTED THIS FINDING by
analysing road crash statistics and published in early 2004. [2]

In complete contrast, DfT statistics have been claiming a year on year
reduction in Killed and Seriously Injured (KSI) road casualties. KSI is
dominated by the serious injury statistics because the number of serious is
around ten times greater than the numbers killed. DfT policies and DfT targets
are set and measured in KSI, but the new research is very strong evidence that
KSI is not a reliable series.

This means that DfT targets and policies are founded on figures that are wholly
unreliable - and even worse - independent figures show no improvement
whatsoever resulting from DfT policy.

But that's not the end of the story. It still gets worse because we know that
major road safety drivers are continuing to deliver improved safety. These
include:

* Ongoing improvements in vehicle safety, with over 2 million safer vehicles
replacing old ones in the national fleet every year.

* Ongoing improvements in road engineering safety, including new bypasses,
black spot treatments and the transfer of vehicles to safer roads such as
motorways.

* Ongoing improvements in post crash emergency care.

These three drivers alone are sufficiently large and important to result in
reductions in deaths and serious injuries of around 5% per annum even after
taking full account of the growth in traffic.

But now we know that we have seen no reduction in hospital admissions and only
very slight falls in road deaths since 1996. Far from making the roads safer,
DfT policies have misunderstood the nature of road safety and have made the
situation considerably worse.

DfT have used their Killed and Seriously Injured figures for all of the
following:

- To set road safety targets
- To measure achievements against targets
- To evaluate interventions including speed cameras

The new research indicates that THE ENTIRE BASIS for DfT policy and target
evaluation is flawed and meaningless. The DfT's figures are going down, but
they DO NOT represent a genuine improvement in road safety. Instead the changes
in the figures are caused by variations in the degree of underreporting.

The Hospital figures are far more robust with each entry the result of a
medical decision about patient treatment.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "Department for Transport (DfT) has a dangerously
oversimplified view of road safety. Despite over a decade of ever-increasing
speed controls the roads have not got safer. My extensive research reveals that
DfT policy is making drivers worse. We're spending far too much time
concentrating on the wrong safety factors - and DfT is responsible."

"I've know for three years that the serious injury statistics were behaving
very strangely in relation to other road safety indicators. The only possible
conclusion was that changes in the figures were an artefact of the reporting
process. The new BMJ paper provides very strong additional evidence."

"If road safety had continued to improve at the previous rate (before 'speed
kills' road safety policy, national road deaths would be down to about 2,000
per annum by now. We're 1,200 live a year behind target and I an certain that
bad policy is responsible."

"Department for Transport road safety is not fit for purpose."

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

[1] New BMJ paper:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidpdf ... 1.4Fv1.pdf

[2] Safe Speed page on problems with the serious injury stats:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/serious.html


DfT are aware that their figures may be 'dodgy' see:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/d ... 038554.pdf
contains (page 3):

"Research conducted in the 1990s has shown that many non-fatal injury accidents
are not reported to the police. In addition some casualties reported to the
police are not recorded and the severity of injury tends to be underestimated.
The combined effect of under-reporting, under-recording and misclassification
suggests that there may be 2.76 times as many seriously injured casualties than
are recorded in the national casualty figures and 1.70 slight casualties,
according to TRL Report 173 Comparison of hospital and police casualty data: a
national study by H F Simpson. The Department is undertaking further research
to investigate whether the level of under-reporting has changed."

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Quite.

As an East Kent MP Mr Ladyman might be interested to know that local Kent Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (led by senior & strategic Local Authority people) are keen to establish better data sharing between A&E and the police to get a better handle on when and where crime is happening. This is precisely because it has been acknowledged that police data and hospital data often show different profiles. In fact hospital/ambulance data has already led to different policing patterns in a couple of local towns. This includes data collected at the hospital on Mr Ladyman's doorstep in Margate.

_________________
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

That is one tippy top press release Paul!

If there is one thing ministers and departments hate being called, it's "unfit for purpose".

_________________
Safe yet Swift.

I'll second that , a very big CONGRATULATION & THANKS to Mr. SafeSpeed, AKA Paul !

I especially like that graph on page 2 of the BMJ report pdf, such a clear divergance between the "Police stats" and the "HES admissions", clear and simple axes, anyone can understand what's going on. I think that this graph should be clearly publicized on this site and elsewhere (especially elsewhere!!!) and titled "Spin-buster" or similar.
Oh happy day

Well done for keeping at it - it looks like there has been some more coverage now, and hopefully some more nationals will pick it up, I suspect the DM might run with it too now.

I only hope that all the speed camera apologists who have passed through here accept their complicity in this and hang their heads.

Messrs Callaghan, Chapman, Monbiot et al - if you are reading this then shame on you!

Safe Speed issued the following further PR at 17:07 this afternoon:

PR328: Policy in crisis; DfT in denial

news: for immediate release

Within an article revealing the serious failure of DfT statistics and policies,
The Daily Express today contains:

"The Department denied its traffic policies were not working. "Any bold
conclusions drawn from these figures would be misleading," it said. "There is
no doubt road safety has improved, regardless of under-reporting. Deaths
continue to go down."

Of course the spokesman is completely wrong because road deaths have not fallen
as expected, Deaths are only marginally down, with just two falls in the last
decade. Worse, the DfT has had research carried out into the reasons that road
deaths are not reducing as expected. The clear answer from TRL Limited was:
'because drivers are getting worse'. Safe Speed reminds DfT that their policies
are a direct cause of reduced driver quality. Although DfT haven't bothered to
research the issue, it is now blindingly obvious to everyone except the DfT.
DfT remain welded to a policy in crisis.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "The Department for Transport is clearly in
absolute denial about the complete failure of their figures and their
policies."

"Their policies obviously are not working. At the centre of the problem is the
hated speed camera. It's as clear as crystal from the hospitalisation figures
that speed cameras have neither saved lives nor serious injuries."

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

Earlier Safe Speed PR with full details of the BMJ paper:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SafeSpeedPR/message/181

Official DfT road deaths figures:

1984 5599
1985 5165
1986 5382
1987 5125
1988 5052
1989 5373
1990 5217
1991 4568
1992 4229
1993 3814
1994 3650
1995 3621
1996 3598
1997 3599
1998 3421
1999 3423
2000 3409
2001 3450
2002 3431
2003 3508
2004 3221

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety