It’s always good to have some good news to talk about and latest figures from The Department for Transport give us just that, as they confirm that road deaths show there was a 14% reduction over 2007, to a low of 2,538 fatalities.
2007 figures themselves were pretty good as well, as for the first time in forty years; they dropped below 3000, at 2946 deaths.
Go back to 1966 and there were around 8,000 deaths a year and from my way of thinking, that’s a pretty good reduction, especially when you consider the small number of vehicles on the roads back then compared to today.
These figures equate to 4.3 deaths per 100,000 population and are the joint lowest rate – along with Sweden – of any country with a population of 500,000 or more.
Its clear this is a trend, rather than a ‘blip’ but no ones really certain as to why this is, although there are stacks of possible, such as us traveling less miles in 2008 (around 1% down on 2007), or perhaps traveling more slowly, or maybe its just that modern cars with airbags, restraint systems, fabulous brakes and pedestrian friendly design make crashes more ‘survivable’ and frankly, I believe that really has to play a huge part in these statistics.
There is an argument that ‘excessive speed’ accounts for many accidents, but it seems that over the past few years, only around 7% can be blamed on speed and there is therefore an anomaly here, for we are told that the two things are totally related and if the number of speeding fines are rising dramatically, clearly more people are still speeding and yet deaths are reducing, surely, with the numbers of drivers getting fined increasing, then road deaths must increase, or does this just indicate what many of us believe that the two are not related in the way we are led to believe and that speed cameras are nothing but revenue raisers, or cash cow’s,
Looking a bit deeper, there were around 170,000 crashes involving personal injury during 2008, which is down by something like 6% on the previous year.
Its still car drivers that are most likely to die on the roads and of these 170,000 crashes, over 25,000 involved death or serious injury resulting in the death of 1257 car drivers in 2008 (around 9% down on 2007)
Other deaths come from motor cyclists who accounted for 493 deaths, pedal cyclists who numbered 115 deaths and worryingly 572 pedestrians and for my mind, it’s in these areas where we should be spending time to drive the message home, as jointly, they account for over 46% of the deaths on our roads.
We have all seen, or been passed by a rampaging motor cyclist and indeed, I have even spoken with reputable business men who think they are Valentino Rossi and have bragged about doing 160mph on their dream machines, so its no wonder bikers account for around 19% of all road deaths.
Cyclists tend to be a law unto themselves, ignoring signals, traffic lights, one way streets, and in an argument with a car, its usually the cyclist that comes off worse and that’s reflected in the 115 deaths last year, but a more worrying figure is that some 16,297 cyclists were injured on our roads last year and that’s a phenomenal figure and you have to ask yourself, had things been only very slightly different, how many of these 16,000 injuries could have been fatalities?
Pedestrian deaths shouldn’t happen, simple as that. For the main part, cars don’t drive on the pavements, yet 572 pedestrians were killed last year. If you drive, you must have witnessed people walking out into the road without looking, or perhaps engrossed in what ever is on their I-Pod at the time. The lines are clear, the pavement is for the pedestrian and the road is for vehicles. Surely, it’s not a lot to ask that pedestrians observe a proper process before crossing the road? Just like cyclists, in argument with a car, it’s the car that comes off best and whilst it must be one of any driver’s worst nightmares, to hit a pedestrian, it’s so hard to predict the unpredictable, if as you see everyday; people just walk into the road without looking.
When I was young, it was drummed into me that if I crossed the road, I should stop at the curb, look left, look right and then look left again and if it was all clear “and only then” should I cross the road. We have the ‘Tufty Club’ and ‘The Green Cross Code’ man all telling us how to stay safe and even Alvin Stardust had a go at telling us how to cross safely. Why these messages are not continuously pushed home in an effort to cut these 572 pedestrian deaths which account for over 22% of all road deaths and in my belief, are all easily avoidable if we just follow a simple procedure.
Yes as a country, we are doing well in reducing deaths on our roads, but as we all know, accidents will always happen and we are never going to return a zero figure, and I suppose, compared to other causes of death, seven people a day dying on the roads isn’t that bad, but its seven lives ended, seven families devastated and when with just a little more thought, by certain groups of people, this number could be reduced even further.
