The right balance on Road Safety
Three items of news in the past few days have made me think about road safety. The first concerns speed cameras - the government has recently refused 500 requests for new cameras. The second concerns use of mobile phones while driving: there has been a study suggesting that those who phone while driving are more likely to have an accident, which may be right, and that the increased risk is just as high for hands-free mobiles as for hand-held ones, which I do not believe. The third is that two council Group Leaders in Copeland and St Albans - of different parties but both people who have worked hard for their respective communities - have been in trouble for speeding.
Any discussion on road safety risks getting trapped between the
irresistible force of our desire for greater safety and security, and the immovable object of human nature - we can gently nudge people in the direction of safer behaviour but it is impractical to act as if risks can be reduced to zero. People will not obey rules which try to get them to do so.
There is a conflict in our thinking in that in our daily lives all of us are used to managing acceptable risks, but all of us instinctively recoil from the idea of an acceptable number of fatal accidents. Almost every action we take - from picking up a sharp tool to do some gardening, turning on an electrical appliance, taking a bath (people are killed every year from slipping in the bath) eating or drinking anything (there might be a something wrong with it) or even crossing the road, carries a small, usually infinitesimal, risk of death or injury. Most of us can handle the idea that we could be knocked down and killed while walking down to the local shop but the probability is so low that we treat it as an acceptable risk. We deal with the idea of acceptable risk because we have to, sometimes by convincing ourselves that it won't happen to us, sometimes by not consciously thinking about it.
But when you go from the choices facing an individual to those facing a country of 55 million people, the same decision by which one person might regard one chance in a million of being killed each year as an acceptable risk would be equivalent to saying that society regards about 55 people a year being killed as an acceptable number of deaths. And for most people that idea is unthinkable.
Anyone who smokes, anyone who does not exercise, and anyone who drives more than a thousand miles a year has accepted a risk of premature death as a result which considerably greater than one in a million. Yet almost all those people would recoil from the idea that any policy which allows for 55 deaths a year in Britain should be adopted, and any politician foolish enough to say that this number of deaths was satisfactory would never win another election.
This conflict between our attitude to individual risk and collective
death rates is one reason society often imposes speed limits and other rules that are very difficult to enforce. And it leads to accusations of hypocrisy - everyone says that road safety is important but almost all of us sometimes drive too fast.
What would happen if we took the idea of zero risk to its logical
conclusion ? We could save thousands of lives if we reintroduced the
4mph speed limit faced by the first motor cars and the rule that all
vehicles had to be preceded by a man on foot with a red flag. Such a
policy would also cause Britain to grind to a halt. Most of us would
consider such an extreme law to be impractical and unreasonable. But the more extreme "Health and safety" advocates sometimes appear to take such an absolutist view that you wonder if they would like to do so. For example, the Health and Safety executive recently tried to prosecute the commissioner of the metropolitan police because a policeman was injured while he pursued a cat-burglar across a roof.
One example of a safety measure which has been ruined by over-use is the electronic signs on motorways. At least seven times out of ten, when these advise a speed below the normal limit I find that it relates to a problem which has since cleared, or they advise you to slow down many miles before you need to, or by a greater amount than you need to. In consequence 95% of motorway users totally ignore them, and those of us who pay any attention whatsoever are made to feel like idiots as we slow down and everyone else shoots past us. This is a real example of "less is more" - if these signs were used less they would have more effect.
When I listen to debates about speed cameras or mobile phone use by
drivers, I often feel that people on one side of the debate are taking too absolutist a view while the other side are not taking avoidable risks to human life seriously enough.
Some speed cameras do save lives. On the route from my old house to my office there is a junction where there had been frequent fatal
accidents. Now that a 40 mph limit has been imposed, enforced with two pairs of highly visible speed cameras, people drive much more slowly past that junction. I doubt if those cameras raise much in fines precisely because they work, but I am convinced that the risk of death and injury has been reduced. And it is a myth that all speed cameras are unpopular. After a fatal accident in the village which I represent as a councillor, there was a spontaneous demonstration by local residents calling for cameras.
And yet, if too many cameras are installed, especially if the cameras and speed limit signs are not highly visible, there is a real danger of discrediting the whole system and convincing motorists that it's all about raising money from them. And cameras are not the only solution.
Another dangerous junction near my old home, also the scene of fatal
accidents and nicknamed "kamikaze alley," has been given a 40 mph
limit, this time enforced with an engineering solution. There have been no more deaths at this site either.
Trying to take a pragmatic approach to the need to balance safety and practicality can mean you get attacked from both sides. But it is the only realistic option, not least because an absolutist approach which ignores human nature will lead to more deaths in practice.
Any discussion on road safety risks getting trapped between the
irresistible force of our desire for greater safety and security, and the immovable object of human nature - we can gently nudge people in the direction of safer behaviour but it is impractical to act as if risks can be reduced to zero. People will not obey rules which try to get them to do so.
There is a conflict in our thinking in that in our daily lives all of us are used to managing acceptable risks, but all of us instinctively recoil from the idea of an acceptable number of fatal accidents. Almost every action we take - from picking up a sharp tool to do some gardening, turning on an electrical appliance, taking a bath (people are killed every year from slipping in the bath) eating or drinking anything (there might be a something wrong with it) or even crossing the road, carries a small, usually infinitesimal, risk of death or injury. Most of us can handle the idea that we could be knocked down and killed while walking down to the local shop but the probability is so low that we treat it as an acceptable risk. We deal with the idea of acceptable risk because we have to, sometimes by convincing ourselves that it won't happen to us, sometimes by not consciously thinking about it.
But when you go from the choices facing an individual to those facing a country of 55 million people, the same decision by which one person might regard one chance in a million of being killed each year as an acceptable risk would be equivalent to saying that society regards about 55 people a year being killed as an acceptable number of deaths. And for most people that idea is unthinkable.
Anyone who smokes, anyone who does not exercise, and anyone who drives more than a thousand miles a year has accepted a risk of premature death as a result which considerably greater than one in a million. Yet almost all those people would recoil from the idea that any policy which allows for 55 deaths a year in Britain should be adopted, and any politician foolish enough to say that this number of deaths was satisfactory would never win another election.
This conflict between our attitude to individual risk and collective
death rates is one reason society often imposes speed limits and other rules that are very difficult to enforce. And it leads to accusations of hypocrisy - everyone says that road safety is important but almost all of us sometimes drive too fast.
What would happen if we took the idea of zero risk to its logical
conclusion ? We could save thousands of lives if we reintroduced the
4mph speed limit faced by the first motor cars and the rule that all
vehicles had to be preceded by a man on foot with a red flag. Such a
policy would also cause Britain to grind to a halt. Most of us would
consider such an extreme law to be impractical and unreasonable. But the more extreme "Health and safety" advocates sometimes appear to take such an absolutist view that you wonder if they would like to do so. For example, the Health and Safety executive recently tried to prosecute the commissioner of the metropolitan police because a policeman was injured while he pursued a cat-burglar across a roof.
One example of a safety measure which has been ruined by over-use is the electronic signs on motorways. At least seven times out of ten, when these advise a speed below the normal limit I find that it relates to a problem which has since cleared, or they advise you to slow down many miles before you need to, or by a greater amount than you need to. In consequence 95% of motorway users totally ignore them, and those of us who pay any attention whatsoever are made to feel like idiots as we slow down and everyone else shoots past us. This is a real example of "less is more" - if these signs were used less they would have more effect.
When I listen to debates about speed cameras or mobile phone use by
drivers, I often feel that people on one side of the debate are taking too absolutist a view while the other side are not taking avoidable risks to human life seriously enough.
Some speed cameras do save lives. On the route from my old house to my office there is a junction where there had been frequent fatal
accidents. Now that a 40 mph limit has been imposed, enforced with two pairs of highly visible speed cameras, people drive much more slowly past that junction. I doubt if those cameras raise much in fines precisely because they work, but I am convinced that the risk of death and injury has been reduced. And it is a myth that all speed cameras are unpopular. After a fatal accident in the village which I represent as a councillor, there was a spontaneous demonstration by local residents calling for cameras.
And yet, if too many cameras are installed, especially if the cameras and speed limit signs are not highly visible, there is a real danger of discrediting the whole system and convincing motorists that it's all about raising money from them. And cameras are not the only solution.
Another dangerous junction near my old home, also the scene of fatal
accidents and nicknamed "kamikaze alley," has been given a 40 mph
limit, this time enforced with an engineering solution. There have been no more deaths at this site either.
Trying to take a pragmatic approach to the need to balance safety and practicality can mean you get attacked from both sides. But it is the only realistic option, not least because an absolutist approach which ignores human nature will lead to more deaths in practice.
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