Plans are being considered to reduce the speed limits on rural single carriageway roads from 60mph to 50mph.
Whilst its thought the move will be potentially unpopular, the government believes it will cut road deaths amongst motorists.
Road Safety Minister Jim Fitzpatrick is reacting to figures which suggest that the rural parts of the road network were more prone to crashes and believes reducing the limit will improve the UK’s road safety record which used to be one of the best in the world, but has slipped in recent years.
In 2007 there were 2,946 deaths and 30,000 serious injuries on British roads, with speed being a factor in 29% of them. Personally, I can’t quite get to grips with the “speed factor” argument as of course, if you are moving at all (however slowly), speed will always be a factor and therefore logically, if we never moved at all, clearly there would never be any accidents! But fact is we do move, and we need to go places so there will be accidents.
Using 2005/6 figures, there are 32,897,000 vehicles registered for use on UK roads including cars, vans, taxis, buses and trucks. That’s just a touch under 33 million vehicles on our roads and the 2005 statistics shows that between them they covered over 300 billion miles in a full year. Deaths on the roads in a year amount to under 3000.
Just one person killed on our roads is one death is one too many, but when you consider the statistics as to how many vehicles there are on the road and how many miles they cover, it puts it all into perspective and has to make you ask if the government is actually using the these statistics as a reason to bring about yet more restrictions and the cynic might say, more opportunities to raise money with speed cameras and the like
Let’s put that into bit more of a context to see just how dangerous using the road is in comparison with everyday life in general and let’s see, as many suspect, if the Government is over reacting again, and our roads taking everything into consideration are a reasonably safe place to be.
In 2007 there were 504,000 deaths in the UK in total, with road deaths accounting for 2946 or 0.58% of the deaths that year (and that’s just over half of one percent).
Contrast that with 8234 deaths which showed Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) on the death certificate, or the 1593 deaths which mentioned (MRSA) on the death certificate which are both things the government have responsibility for, but have clearly failed to control and which account for over 3 times the number of people killed on our roads.
Life choices such as drinking alcohol, accounted for 8724 deaths, which is again almost 3 times the number of people killed on our roads. Sadly, suicides accounted for 5377 deaths in 2007 also. ROSPA say that more accidents happen at home than anywhere else and each year, they account for around 4000 deaths.
Smoking whilst not the sole reason adds to the horrific statistic that one in four of us will die from cancer (over 125,000 people each year).
Whilst I know that we can all get endless statistics to prove one thing is safer than another, surely, when you consider there is around 33 million vehicles moving around our little island and covering a massive 300 billion miles on our roads, well there are just going to be accidents and with the best will in the world, you have to ask just how any amount of messing around with speed limits and that kind of thing is going to see any kind of significant reduction.
OK, as we all agree, every life is absolutely precious and so just one life saved is important, but that applies to other causes of death also whether its caused by a dirty hospital ward or a life choice that we make, its just that the headline figure always seems to be road deaths whilst frankly, it appears its 3 times safer to drive your car than have an overnight stay in a hospital or take a drink?
The Government is bringing forward a range of proposals to try to boost safety, including imposing six penalty points on motorists who break speed limits “excessively”, and punishments for using mobile phones while driving and there are also suggestions that a formal “drug-drive limit” could be introduced, after statistics showed a fifth of all road deaths were caused by drivers on illegal substances.
Researching the statistics for this article really surprised me. I thought my chances of having a serious road accident were huge and this was further supported by the amount of safety equipment that’s shoe horned into our modern cars, but fact is that one person is killed for every one million miles that’s driven on our roads, yet in ordinary everyday life, there are almost 3 times as many alcohol related deaths each day, In fact staggeringly, over 30% more people die each day as a result of accidents in their home, than do on our roads. The same statistics say that you are 3 times more likely to die through an acquired infection such as C. difficile than on the road and that most horrifyingly of all that every day, a massive 342 people die as a result of cancer, compared to around 8 road deaths.
Reducing the speed limits to 50mph will become an obsession; it will result in no one for example being able to overtake a lorry and should bunch us all up nicely. It will give all these speed camera reduction partnerships much more to aim at and should keep the folks who make speed cameras in work and of course, help fill the coffers with all those extra fines that can be dished out, with probably little or no effect on reducing accidents.
This isn’t a jolly way to end this story, but it does demonstrate that whilst it of course is dangerous to do something like driving a car, that if you pay attention to what you are doing and I mean proper attention, treating your driving with the respect, and drive your car like its an ‘art-form’ and chances are pretty huge that you will get through your entire motoring life without a scratch, although there is every chance that you’re not going to do it with a clean licence.
