Be Careful of Statistics

Governent accident statistics are somewhat misleading.

For a start they only include accidents that have been reported to the police, the majority of accidents are not reported to the police. This skews the statistics somewhat. No you are not legally required to report an accident to the police. If you and another party have a shunt where no damage is caused to property other than your cars and the contents thereof then you do no have to report the incident to the police.

Fatalities are one thing, but the statistics for "serious" injuries are a joke. A serious injury is classified as one where a visit to hospital is required. However after a very minor shunt a few years ago a police officer attended and recommended that I attend casualty in case I had suffered whiplash or concussion he even offered to call an ambulance. I didn't go to hospital and was absolutely fine. However had I attended hospital then this minor bump would have gone down on the logs as an accident involving a serious injury. I don't know if the PC's recommendation was based on honest concern or is a standard procedure for that force. If it was the latter then it appears that any accident in that area, and perhaps the whole country, then the majority of accidents where the police attend may well be classed as involving serious injury. If this is the case then the accident figures for serious injuries are worthless.

There is also a huge question over the figures published for accidents where excess speed is a contributory factor. How is that decision made? Are they only including accidents where the speed of the vehicles involved can be measured properly? In which case the vast majority of accidents (like 99%+) could not be recorded as such, since no proper investigation is carried out. How is the decision reached that excess speed contributed to the accident? Is it enough that one or more vehicles were breaking the speed limit? That in itself is no proof at all that speed was a contributory factor. It makes the assumption that the speed limit was reasonable for the location and conditions at the time.

In the real world away from official statistics most accidents, whether including serious injury or not, seem to fall into one of

Vehicles failing to yield right of way. T-Junctions, lane changing, roundabouts, etc.

Tailgating.

Pedestrians failing to yield right of way.

And not forgetting "My Lane Myopia" - i.e. people driving into things that shouldn't be there.

All of these are basically down to people, peds as well as drivers, failing to excercise due care. And it can't be reasonably argued that the primary cause of the vast majority of accidents is not at least one person failing to excercise due care. This being so it is ridiculous to single out speed as being a contributory factor in the majority of accidents. The primary cause of most accidents is carelessness and the primary cause should be addressed before you start looking at other contributory factors.

Excercising due care is effectively the primary rule of the road traffic act and I believe that driving standards would improve immesurably and accident rates fall accordingly were more prosecutions brought for Driving Without Due Care and Attention. However this would be too labour intensive and not cost effective, so it won't happen. Our lords and masters seem to believe that all public services should be cost effective and preferably run at a profit.

To be fair to drivers I also think more action needs to be taken against pedestrians causing accidents in a similar way. It is ridiculous to assume that everybody who steps under a bus is the victim, and yet that assumption seems to be made in most cases.

@the guy who got caught 3 times in one trip...

If the *whole journey* was done at over the limit, you have only committed *one* offence. You can only be prosecuted three times for speeding on one journey if they can prove you slowed down to under the limit and then exceeded the limit *again*.

Definitely worth a punt to see if you can get two of those offences thrown out....