Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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wrinkly
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Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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jervi
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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The last one had so many errors in it, it could of been classified as satire. I wonder if this one is any better?
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Nope.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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The quickest of reality checks will show that the UK is very much in the list of the top LEAST deadly roads globally

https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/

Least in 2021 per 100,000 motor vehicles
San Marino 1.8 - where is there to drive ?
Norway 3.0
Switzerland 3.7
Sweden 4.6
Japan 5.7
UK 5.7
Spain 5.8
Netherlands 6.0
Malta 6.8
Luxembourg 9.9

The most dangerous I could find was Somalia at 6532.5

The USA rate is 14.2
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

Post by quantinghome »

I have no doubt that Panorama will be as sensationalist as it always is.

However, progress in reducing UK road deaths has essentially stalled over the last decade (yes, there were drops in 2020 and 2021 for obvious reasons). We can't just rest on our laurels and flatter ourselves by international comparisons, encouraging though that is.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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KeithW wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 21:00 The quickest of reality checks will show that the UK is very much in the list of the top LEAST deadly roads globally

https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/

Least in 2021 per 100,000 motor vehicles
San Marino 1.8 - where is there to drive ?
Norway 3.0
Switzerland 3.7
Sweden 4.6
Japan 5.7
UK 5.7
Spain 5.8
Netherlands 6.0
Malta 6.8
Luxembourg 9.9

The most dangerous I could find was Somalia at 6532.5

The USA rate is 14.2
The San Marino figure is a bit of a farce. This site says that it has 1.6 cars per head of population (including children) and that many cars use San Marino as a "flag of convenience" [my terminology] for tax purposes. Its population is 33,000 so assuming the same car ownership as the UK, about 20,000 cars are actually owned by residents. If we factor this in, then the death rate per 100,000 cars is about 9 per annum. Since this works out on average to one actual death per annum, the vagaries of small sample sizes come into play.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Certainly highlighted the risibly poor A82 at Loch Lomond-side, although disappointed to hear that more speed cameras were what was required. A rebuild is what is required.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

Post by hoagy_ytfc »

quantinghome wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 21:28 (yes, there were drops in 2020 and 2021 for obvious reasons).
For those who paid more attention than I did (it was on in the background while I was working), what was the figure that they send went notably up in 2020, which had been level for a while? I thought that was deaths?

Even so, one rise is not a trend. (hopefully!).


Maybe it was deaths per km, with distance travelled going down in Covid meaning that total deaths could stay the same while the Panorama number went up?
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Road fatalities in the UK have dropped, during my period of road interest, from 8,000 in 1966 to 1,750 in 2019, the last year of "normal" traffic flow. This has been achieved by a wide range of measures, among which the highway engineering discipline, including the various professionals on here, can take a good share of the credit for unceasingly trying to get the numbers down. As usage has gone up from 100 to 350 billion vehicle miles in the same interval it's even more of a huge improvement (some elements of which, like bus mileage, have fallen over that time).

We used to say, as the figures fell towards 2,000, that it would bottom out, and we "would never get below 2,000". Not true !

There's an interesting (to some) document on highway statistics and trends here :

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... n-2017.pdf
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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FtoE wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 22:36 Certainly highlighted the risibly poor A82 at Loch Lomond-side, although disappointed to hear that more speed cameras were what was required.
Most of the footage of the A82 was of the old narrow twisty sections alongside the lakeside which means it's all but impossible to reach the 50mph speed limit let alone exceed it. Speed cameras on this section will have no effect.
A rebuild is what is required.
If what is wanted is a modern safe fast road then I agree - but there must be safe passing locations otherwise the accidents will just happen at higher speeds.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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KeithW wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 21:00 San Marino 1.8 - where is there to drive ?
As someone who's actually driven in San Marino, there's actually quite a lot! The roads themselves are pretty good quality, and although there's a number of roads with steep edges, they are well barriered. Pedestrian facilities are fairly good too, certainly no worse than in the UK.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Steven wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 08:15
KeithW wrote: Mon Jan 17, 2022 21:00 San Marino 1.8 - where is there to drive ?
As someone who's actually driven in San Marino, there's actually quite a lot! The roads themselves are pretty good quality, and although there's a number of roads with steep edges, they are well barriered. Pedestrian facilities are fairly good too, certainly no worse than in the UK.
I've been there twice! If I recall correctly, the national speed limit is 70km/h. The dual carriageway that leads up the mountain from the Italian SS72 is surely the most twisty road of its kind! On both occasions I drove in on that road, and out on one of the back roads.

The high ratio of car ownership could be down to it being a tax haven leading to some individuals having 'collections', while others might own as many cars as possible so that they can stick RSM stickers on them. :cheek:
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

Post by Bryn666 »

The rise in fatalities is cyclists and pedestrians. It's almost as if those of us pressing for more active travel infrastructure (and being told we're nasty car haters in the process) have a point that our roads are unsafe unless you're in a two tonne box.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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The government's figures for 2020 are here. I haven't read this in detail, but at first glance all of the measures they look at have gone down for 2020 compared to 2019. Am I missing something?

That document also says cyclist fatalities have gone down, but I can well believe that on some measures they have increased, specifically in absolute terms and as a share of total deaths on the roads. This is in itself not indicative of anything getting worse as such, but rather is a reflection of (a) more people cycling further, and (b) that safety for occupants of cars and larger vehicles has improved faster than cyclist safety has. It's the same phenomenon seen in covid statistics of a higher proportion of hospitalisations being of children when most adults, and especially vulnerable adults, have been vaccinated but children haven't. It's not that covid has got worse for children, but that it's got a lot better for adults.

On the other hand, it does give a clear pointer of where to concentrate on to achieve further improvements, so I concur entirely with the spirit of Bryn's comment even if I can't immediately find evidence that cycling fatalities have gone up per unit distance.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Could the advent of the mobile phone be a factor behind any increase in pedestrian fatalities?
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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Owain wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 09:47 Could the advent of the mobile phone be a factor behind any increase in pedestrian fatalities?
I would be surprised if it wasn't having had people step into the road on front of me chatting on their phones and the there was the cyclist on the Madingley Road who fell off in Cambridge who was trying to steer with his knees while texting.
There is evidence of this from the USA
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23644536/
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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FosseWay wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 09:25 The government's figures for 2020 are here. I haven't read this in detail, but at first glance all of the measures they look at have gone down for 2020 compared to 2019. Am I missing something?
Thanks to Covid, mileage would have been greatly reduced in 2020 compared to 2019. Apparently the deaths divided by distance travelled figure did rise. Part of me isn't that surprised because there would have been a massive drop in commuting much of which is done at a slow speed where fatalities are less likely to occur.

That's not to say that I don't think there are some areas of concern. Particularly, many people on this forum have been mentioning the reduction in the numbers of traffic police for a number of years now.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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KeithW wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:19
I would be surprised if it wasn't having had people step into the road on front of me chatting on their phones and the there was the cyclist on the Madingley Road who fell off in Cambridge who was trying to steer with his knees while texting.
It's not just chatting. Amazing how many tourists etc go around London looking not at the sights (and the traffic) but glued to looking downwards at their phones for directions, audio commentaries, sending selfies to back home, etc. A tour guide wrote about this specific aspect that their walking participants were nowadays often more concerned in interchanging selfies than watching out when crossing the road (or listening to him).

Likewise phone-based navigation apps, or Uber job lists, which some increasingly place when driving right dead centre in their field of vision in their windscreen. Which brings us back to police enforcement.
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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KeithW wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:19
Owain wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 09:47 Could the advent of the mobile phone be a factor behind any increase in pedestrian fatalities?
I would be surprised if it wasn't having had people step into the road on front of me chatting on their phones and the there was the cyclist on the Madingley Road who fell off in Cambridge who was trying to steer with his knees while texting.
There is evidence of this from the USA
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23644536/
I think the fact that a quarter of drivers admit to handheld phone use while driving is of significantly more relevance and concern. You only need to walk past a traffic queue in any city to see the huge proportion of drivers who are quite happy to indulge in this behaviour. Even while stationary, this does not suggest an appreciation of the situational awareness required not to cause death and injury on the roads. These motorists are lucky that pedestrian awareness and use of pavements etc is so high in the UK as there's no way many of these drivers would be able to successfully execute sudden stops for pedestrians on a regular basis.

The invention of the 'phone zombie' caricature is just another in a long line of victim-blaming behaviours used by the anti-road safety lobby, rarely borne out by hard evidence, going right back to the invention of 'jaywalking' in the states following the introduction of motor vehicles to cities and consequent death and injury caused.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... le-driving
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Re: Panorama tonight on "Britain's killer roads?"

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jnty wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:44 The invention of the 'phone zombie' caricature is just another in a long line of victim-blaming behaviours used by the anti-road safety lobby, rarely borne out by hard evidence, going right back to the invention of 'jaywalking' in the states following the introduction of motor vehicles to cities and consequent death and injury caused.
Why does discussion of road safety always have to be some kind of zero sum game? You appear to be arguing that because driving while using your phone is dangerous (which you're darn right about, btw), phone use by pedestrians can't possibly be a cause of increased danger. It's concentrating on phones when your attention should be elsewhere that's the problem, not whether that is occurring behind the wheel, on a bike or on foot.

Even when on the phone, people do tend to respond to the existence of pavements and kerbs, and there is a natural tendency to avoid stepping off a kerb into traffic that protects a lot of pedestrians from their own lack of observation as well as any behaviour by car drivers that may put them at risk. This safety net is largely absent when it comes to pedestrian/cycle interactions, especially in countries where cycle paths are physically segregated from motor traffic but less so from pedestrians.

I'm also not sure why you seem to believe that zomboid behaviour in relation to phones is the preserve of a specific mode of transport. What all phone users have in common, whether they are being "zombies" or not, is that they are human beings. It would surely be very odd if all the people we complain about for using their phone while driving were as good as gold regarding paying attention the moment they get out of their car and walk around, or vice versa. If you're the kind of person who walks straight across a cycle path without looking because you're concentrating on your phone, you are probably going to do precisely the same behind the wheel.

I can categorically state that "phone zombies" exist. They are neither a caricature nor an invention. I encounter them pretty much every time I cycle in the city, either on foot, on bikes or in cars. The difference between modes is as I explained above: I'm more likely to be affected by pedestrians being muppets because they have more frequent physical access to the same part of the road as me, and often are actually intended to be there alongside me, whereas car drivers are separated and I only need to interact with them at junctions.
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