Spread the News: Speed is not the absolute pariah

[jnrdavo]

Study shows speed is not the absolute pariah
Peter McKay | December 30, 2008

US Department of Transportation study finds only five percent of crashes are caused by excessive speed.

Taken from wheels online....Spread the word, maybe the pollies will listen...

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Speed enforcement continues to be the prime focus of road safety policy and policing across Australia – raking in tens of millions of dollars in revenue annually – and yet the most comprehensive examination of crash causation in the United States for three decades suggests this focus on speed may be misplaced.

Like Australia, lawmakers in the US have regarded speed as the greatest cause of death and injury on the nation’s roads.

But the US government’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study has now concluded that excessive speed is a factor in only five per cent of crashes.

In Australia, so-called road safety experts, opportunistic state politicians and those who live off the road safety industry have often ignored the threat of other factors including inattention, poor driving skills and fatigue to concentrate on an enforcement regimen based on widespread deployment of speed cameras.

Australian states differ widely on to what extent speed figures in the road toll, although most place it as the major factor. Bizarrely, in NSW, the Roads and Traffic Authority has used several different percentages, and these that differ from those announced by a succession of Roads ministers.

It appears they make it up as they go. Certainly there have been no broad and credible studies of crash causes by qualified Australian crash investigators. Most stats used are those based on crash reports filed by police.

The NHTSA investigated 5471 injury crashes that took place across the US between July 3, 2005 and December 31, 2007.

Unlike previous studies automatically generated from computerised data found in police reports, researchers in this study were sent to crash sites before the wrecks were cleared. At the crash scene they could compare the physical evidence with one-on-one interviews with witnesses and others involved in the incident.

The NHTSA then evaluated the data to determine the factors most responsible for the crash.

There was a systematic evaluation of all the potential problems related to errors attributable to the driver, the condition of the vehicle(s) involved, failure of vehicle systems, weather conditions, and road design.

"The critical pre-crash event refers to the action or the event that puts a vehicle on the
course that makes the collision unavoidable, given reasonable driving skills and vehicle handling of the driver," the report said.

Vehicles "travelling too fast for conditions" accounted for only five per cent of the critical pre-crash events.

The NHTSA found that more significant factors were driving off the edge of a road (22 per cent) and drifting over the centre dividing line (16 per cent).

In cases of driver mistakes, distraction and not paying attention to the road accounted for a significant 41 per cent of the errors.

Ten per cent of errors were attributed to drivers lacking proper driving skills
and either freezing up or overreacting at the wheel.

Eight per cent were asleep, having a heart attack or otherwise incapacitated. A similar eight per cent of errors were attributed to driving too fast for conditions and five per cent driving too fast for a corner.

The findings are not far removed from studies in the United Kingdom and other US crash statistics provided by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

Driver or rider error or reaction were issues in four of the six most frequently reported contributory factors involved, according to the Road Casualties Great Britain 2007 report. "For fatal accidents (sic) the most frequently reported contributory factor was loss of control, which was involved in 35 per cent of fatal accidents (sic)." (At Wheels, we call them crashes. There’s no such thing as a road accident).

In the US state of Virginia, "speed too fast" was nominated as the driver error that caused just 2.9 percent of crashes in 2007. More crashes - 3.8 per cent - were caused in Virginia by drivers falling asleep or becoming ill behind the wheel. Another 14.6 per cent were caused by bad weather such as fog, rain and snow. "Speed too fast" was a more significant factor (13.7 per cent) in fatal road crashes but nevertheless still not as high as the 18 per cent of fatal shunts involving alcohol. Sleepiness and fatigue accounted for 9.6 per cent of the deaths.

Wheels isn’t suggesting that exactly the same results might be produced by similar studies in Australia where climate, road conditions, age and type of vehicles, licensing standards, speed limits, and other factors, are different.

But we are saying that evidence is mounting against the simplistic, revenue-based road safety philosophies forced on us by cynical State government authorities who prioritise making money from motorists ahead of saving lives.

[Aussie Volks Guy]

If only we could get the government to listen.....................

[jnrdavo]

I think it's time to start chain mailing his one....

If we all sent it to people interested in cars, it's bound to get around and at some stage, the pollies will get a copy and see how much we rate their current opinion.

I think if it got around enough, the local/regional papers would also pick up on the story again, and what is more important to the politicians than the public screaming about something....