Is the road toll a good indicator

old4570

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Is the road toll a good indicator for how people drive ?

1) There has been a serious improvement in car safety . People are surviving impacts at much higher speeds than a few decades ago . Side intrusion , crumple zones , air bags are all saving lives . Now I don't know what ratio of people at what speed are surviving compared to a few decades ago , but it must be higher .

2) The road toll has generally fallen some what over the last few decades , but is this due to drivers being safer or simply cars being safer to crash ? So if more people are surviving , does this = drivers being safer ?

3) With so many accidents going unreported , it may not be possible to get a true picture of how safe people actually are or not . One thing I do know is that hospital admissions are up to record highs . And this might be a far more accurate indicator for road safety than fatalities .

4) So why do Gooberments quote road fatalities when talking about road safety ? Maybe because fatalities are down ( due to car design ) and lower fatalities makes it look like the Gooberment is doing something , rather than sitting on their brains starving the grey matter off oxygen .

5) So is road safety just another BS illusion perpetrated by the Gooberment to make people feel safer when they are actually in more danger than ever before ?
 
I think as cars have become safer the people driving them have become worse at driving, now dont get me wrong i think a person today can handle a car just as fine as a person in the early 80ties could. ( not factoring driving aids like ABS - ESP and what not )
But today a driver have many more distractions, not only from gadgets but also the kids on the back seat, cuz when i was young my parents only had to scream or threaten a spanking 1 time and that was it, that's out of the question today and now you have to reason with the kids in the back.

To be honest i dont think what ever traffic related laws the idiots voted in charge here have spewed out in the past decades have helped much, what have made numbers drop are solely to blame on improved cars.
And to be honest that do worry me some cuz really it is irresponsible by the people in charge.
Sure they have tripled the fines for not wearing a seatbelt or using a phone - driving too fast, but the police say that have mattered so little they cant tell.
If you really want to make the idiots stop and think you need to do better than a fine ( almost no matter the size of it ) so the idiots in charge have to drop what ever they and us voters have been doing, grow a pair and hit them hard.
I strongly favor confiscations of the car for a period, or for ever if its that kind of idiot, we really have to put the decent and sensible people first and then say to hell with the idiots.
Cuz it is hard to legislate against stupid, and really you should not do that, give them a chance or two, and when that fail say "that's it", now we focus on safeguarding ourself against the person.

I myself have done a lot of stupid things when i was younger, but i am pretty sure i would not have done those things if the penalties have been more severe ( i guess that indicate i am / was not that stupid after all )
BUT ! what have worked for me will not work for a lot of other people, so i think its fair society say " you had your chance" now we will no longer bother about you other than make sure you dont keep up your rein of stupid, and then do so with hard hitting means that even the most stupid idiot will understand.

I have absolutely no trust to gooberment, even if i was fortunate to be allowed to move to and live the rest of my life in Australia i would have the same distrust to my new adopted gooberment, but there is the ringer, as i am a newcomer to Australia i would feel much better as its all new to me and i would have to give new a chance.
I would be a idiot if i started whining the moment i got off the plane, no doubt i will probably quickly find reasons for whining, but i am sure i will be able to overcome that and so draw my last breath as a free and happy man.
Ignore anything i can no longer do here in Denmark, i have lost the ability to ignore things all together, i use to be the champ at ignoring but i have lost that now.
 
They don't count accidents since they don't get the data, they do count deaths and serious injuries since they must all be reported.

In the UK the road death numbers have not changed significantly this decade, which suggests that all the extra 20mph zones and road calming schemes have not been working, or if they have then maybe they have just been turning minor injuries into very minor injuries. Also suggests that if car safety improvements have made a difference then the difference has been wiped out by people feeling safer and driving more dangerously.

I do find it odd that there is no evidence in the figures to suggest that stability control systems have made any difference, I suspect that maybe they have allowed manufacturers to fit cheaper suspension systems where the computers simply make up for their poor performance and the result is no safer!
 
There is evidence that in a few areas where speed cameras have been installed the accident rate went UP, a spped cam near where I live was put there due to a ambulance attending a RTA, freedom of information request showed this to be a young boy who had fallen of his scooter on the pavement with his mum on the way to school, it was put down as RTA and "justified" placing a active speed cam there, it's all bent and screwed in the UK I have been trying to get a much needed 20mph limit on my estate, effectively a single car width road due to parked cars but was told there had to be "natural" speed calming measures in place first, other estates have 20mph limits nearby yet we are the ONLY estate to have a massive speed hump 9 feet long on entrance/exit to estate and can't get it!!
 
With technology making cars "smart", what I'd like to see them do is to make one which is so smart that it would disable all the safety features for the driver if they caused an at-fault crash. When you save an idiot from Darwin's grasp you are doing a dis-service to humanity by giving them another chance to do harm to an innocent :mad: Better would be strong law enforcement with strong punishments but we see that is not happening so another alternative is becoming necessary :(

I'm all for saving innocent lives, but not so much the guilty ones ;)

Phil
 
its all relative though isn't it

we have so many more cars on the road, Between September 2015 and September 2016 In the UK (avg) 5 people died every single day in vehicle related incidents... I don't know how that compares with 10 years earlier, or 40 years earlier, but if the figure was only (hypothetically) 1 per day average 40 years ago with 80% less cars, it's technically no better, despite the advanced technology
 
its all relative though isn't it

we have so many more cars on the road, Between September 2015 and September 2016 In the UK (avg) 5 people died every single day in vehicle related incidents... I don't know how that compares with 10 years earlier, or 40 years earlier, but if the figure was only (hypothetically) 1 per day average 40 years ago with 80% less cars, it's technically no better, despite the advanced technology
I believe that over 40 years the number of road miles traveled has only doubled and since the average speed has increased the number of vehicles actually on the roads has increased significantly less than that. The number of cars that we own my have gone up 5x but we would be in real trouble if miles travelled had gone up that much since we have built very few extra roads, in fact I know of more roads that have been closed down than roads opened!
 
People drive in their comfort zone. They slow down when they feel in danger. Make them feel safe and they will drive faster. Force them to slow down and they will pay less attention.
Whatever you do, drivers will self-regulate to compensate. The risk at the end will be the same, at least as much as their perception allows.

Same is true of pedestrians and other road users. 20mph zones are a licence for squishy road users to completely abandon self-control. They no longer fear death, they do what they like without thinking.
 
I believe that over 40 years the number of road miles traveled has only doubled and since the average speed has increased the number of vehicles actually on the roads has increased significantly less than that.

Hence why I said "hypothetically"
 
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