[SystemSafety] Royal College of Paediatrics weighs in

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 2014-11-19 11:09 , Dominey, Alan (UK) wrote:
> Ah !  Sneaking in figures from elsewhere . . .
> 
> But that is an OVERALL 1,901 (not just urban) - how many RURAL child deaths were there . . .
> 
> No good manipulating figures - you'll end up in government that way  LOL

I don't understand the purpose of your comment at all. I originally said "child-urban-pedestrian
deaths are (were in 2011) less than 1% of road deaths overall in the UK", and so they were. What is
there to disagree with?

If we are talking about UK road safety, best to work from agreed data:
http://www.rospa.com/about/currentcampaigns/publichealth/info/rs2-factsheet.pdf

> Likewise, pointless imposing further 20mph restrictions.  
> IMHO, the answer is BETTER driver training and parents/schools bothering to educate properly on road use

You are theoretically entitled to your own opinion. But in reality not at all :-)

Consider that road deaths went down by 17% in the US when the 55mph overall speed limit was imposed
in 1973 during the (first) oil crisis, just like that. Without any change in driver/other road user
training. That is why it became politically so hard to raise the overall speed limit again for over
two decades. And as they have been slowly increased (on "rural" freeways and other places), figures
have gone back up. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2724439/

Also, road deaths and serious injuries have done down significantly in Britain and Germany in the
last two decades since I have been largely back in Europe. They are some two-thirds of what they
were. Driver education and training, and that of other road users, has not changed one jot. What has
changed is improved vehicle safety technology, improved road design including separation of user
classes, and more general speed limits (in Germany) as well as improved enforcement of speed limits
(UK).

Rospa agrees with my causal assessment.

John Stuart Mill suggests we look for causes of a change amongst other concomitant changes, not
amongst the phenomena which remained the same. I do also.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de