Road crash fatatilty/injury statistics

[Blem]

Hi Affers
No-one wants anyone to be stupid or get hurt while using our public roads.
I don't have the actual numbers but roughly 300+ were killed on S.A. roads in the late 70's. Today it's around 100-120ish. Not a good thing no matter how you look at it BUT given the increase in drivers/road users & the increased protection in modern cars with airbags, seatbelt pretensioners, etc, I think that given the population increase, things are'nt all bad.
200kph+ in my FGF6 is far smoother & safer than 160kph im my old XP Futura coupe.

[geckoGT]

Finally, someone that understands what I have been saying on here for years. It is not the total of deaths that occur each year that paints the road safety picture, it is the number of deaths per 100,000 road users, that is the figure that matters. Unfortunately you have to dig very deep to get that figure and the average keyboard warrior on any forum does not go into that deep.

300 down to 150 may not sound like a huge reduction, but when you view that 50% reduction in conjunction with the 100% increase in road users, that is a more impressive figure.

[jimmyxr6t04]

And i'm sure the government knows all this. Despite how they might act, they're not completely stupid. Unfortunately, far too many people are already brain washed, and it really surprises me at how many people actually have similar views as our road law creators.

Over christmas, i was at a family lunch, and there were some in laws from Melbourne. And bugger me, they were all brain washed. The topic of speed cameras came up, and they all pretty much had the same reply.... "don't speed, and you won't have anything to worry about"... Fair enough too, however, i hardly call going 5 or 10km/h over the posted limit of 100km/h 'speeding'... What a boring, over controlling life we are all set for!

No one is willing to take responsibility for their own actions anymore, far too many people need some one to hold their hand. Just look at all the stupid law suits. Why does my coffee have to warn me that the contents might be hot?

I wish the government would stop trying to interfere with our lives, but unfortunately, there are too many idiots out there who can't make the right decisions in life, so we need a million rules, taxes, and fines to make sure they do the right thing

As sad as it is, road crashes will happen. People will die. But, pretending that they are trying to save our lives by taking more of our money through increased speed cameras makes it look like they are doing something positive about it all!

[sudszy]

Originally Posted by jimmyxr6t04

Fair enough too, however, i hardly call going 5 or 10km/h over the posted limit of 100km/h 'speeding'

Precisely why we have to have laws that enforce this, some people just dont understand or care about how much a difference 10km/h would make to a car's ability to stop, manoeuvre etc.

Perhaps there is some merit in people doing more driving training(Id prefer to call them awareness courses) where they do all this and people walk away from these courses with that appreciation of how you quickly rub off safety margins with small increases in speed, rather than whinge about limits from here to eternity.

These courses aren't necessary for the majority of the population, we could just send off the people(at their own expense) who gather speeding infringements as a condition of being able to continue to hold a licence.

Originally Posted by jimmyxr6t04

. People will die. But, pretending that they are trying to save our lives by taking more of our money through increased speed cameras makes it look like they are doing something positive about it all!

Road crashes are not acts of god, for every one there is a reason why they occured and an alternative course of action that would have never seen it happen in the first place.

[jpd80]

In 1970 there was almost 3,800 road fatalities in Australia, with around 4.3 million vehicles on the road.
By the early 1980s, they got that down slightly to 3,200 with around 8 million vehicles on the road,
major improvement was due to ADRs requiring seat belts, collapsible steering column and
better crash design of vehicles in the 1970s compared to vehicles before then.

One of the scariest statistics that came out of the early 1980s was that 44% of road fatalities
had a Blood Alcohol Level of over 0.05% so half the people dead were impaired to some degree.
Another side of the story was the amount of single vehicle fatalities where the driver had
crashed for no apparent reason other than being impaired or speeding.

Armed with these facts, the various state governments embarked on a policy of
speed cameras and random breath testing and to their credit these two strategies worked.

We can complain all we like but there are a lot of tools on the road that need their
behavior modified by knowing if they drink or speed they will get caught and fined.
In the end, the statistics speak for themselves, near on 14 million vehicles are on our
roads and fatalities are at their lowest. The next step is driver education to replace
the need for draconian regulation of speed and alcohol/drug impairment but for
that to happen, the general driving public would have to change their mind about
how they drive, and how they view other users on the road and that's something
I fear will be a very hard culture to change...

[b0son]

Originally Posted by sudszy

Road crashes are not acts of god

But nor can one conclude that a reduction in crashes is an act of government.

Car makers get far too little credit for the role they've played in improving their cars' crash survivability.

[Keepleft]

Originally Posted by geckoGT

Finally, someone that understands what I have been saying on here for years. It is not the total of deaths that occur each year that paints the road safety picture, it is the number of deaths per 100,000 road users, that is the figure that matters.

Per 100mvkt, 100k measure is too vulnerable to variation.

[aussie muscle]

unfortunately, they don't gather statistics on crashes caused by stupidity.

[2011G6E]

It used to be called "the great road safety lie".

Every year something like 100,000 more drivers take to the roads, yet the road toll is the lowest for 30 years.

In Queensland our road toll last year was , yet some years back they had a campaign called "Stay Alive - Beat 515", the "515" being the previous years road toll.

Then there's this news item:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/lifest...-1225979648952

"QUEENSLAND drivers take a bow – the state was last night on the verge of its lowest road toll since accurate records began almost 60 years ago.
Nearing midnight, Queensland had recorded 247 deaths in 2010 – better than the previous low of 251 recorded in 1952. The toll last night was 84 deaths down on the 2009 toll.

To place the result in perspective, Queensland had only once been below 300 deaths in the past 50 years.

That occurred in 1998 – the first full year speed cameras operated in Queensland. With covert cameras operating for the first time this year, the focus on speed has been hailed as a key reason for the reduction in deaths.

The Courier-Mail and Queensland police this year combined for the Brake the Habit campaign, which aimed to remind drivers of the dangers of speed.

Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson and road safety authorities praised the outcome, but insisted it was possible for the toll to go even lower.
"

So even when they "praise" motorists for keeping the toll low, they can't resist having a dig and saying "you could do better"...

[geckoGT]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

So even when they "praise" motorists for keeping the toll low, they can't resist having a dig and saying "you could do better"...

That is the way it will always be, even if we get to the point that only one person dies on QLD roads in a 12 month period, the government and the public attitude is "one death is one death too many".

Is a zero state road toll for a twelve month period a reasonable expectation? It may be a reasonable expectation but it is not an achievable one.

For example, some of my work mates attended a motorist that crashed his car, it appears that he had a heart attack at the wheel and crashed into a building at 80 km/h, he died. His death will likely count to the road toll but there is nothing road safety can do to prevent it. By the way, he had no history of heart problems that we know of, there was no warning.

Another that I attended that did not die but this is still a good example of freak crashes. I guy is driving along and all of a sudden his airbag deploys with no warning, this startles him and he loses control and hits a pole. The airbag was set off by the car being struck by lightning (confirmed by witnesses), what are the chances of that?

[jimmyxr6t04]

Sudszy - I agree that in some circumstances 10km/h will make a big difference, especially busy places like school zones. I also understand that road crashes are not an act of god. However, you could have a GPS tracking device that reports speed fitted to every car in Australia, a red light camera at every intersection, and i promise you that there will still be road crashes.

Sometimes humans make mistakes. Sure, going exactly to the speed limit 'might' reduce ones harm. But what about those people who don't give a rats *** about the law? And i don't mean the people that go 5km/h per hour over the limit. I mean the real bad people. The murderers, or the people who steal cars and drive at excessive speed, without regard for the road conditions.

People need to take responsibility for their own actions. A speed camera is not going stop the real idiots of this world.

At the end of the day, personally, i think the world is going crazy. We're becoming confined by such strict rules, that the kids can't even sing bah bah black sheep anymore.

Put more cops on the road, let them use one of their biggest powers. Original Authority. Let them decide if 5km/h is really too fast on a beautiful clear day with no cars on the road. Unfortunately, more police is more money. It's cheaper to whack a camera up and pretend the world is all warm and fuzzy, whilst collecting millions of dollars in revenue.

[barra265t]

Originally Posted by jimmyxr6t04

Put more cops on the road, let them use one of their biggest powers. Original Authority. Let them decide if 5km/h is really too fast on a beautiful clear day with no cars on the road.

Hmm.. been there and done that... apparently overtaking a truck in broad daylight with no oncoming traffic is illegal in Victoria (when a cop named 'D Smart' is hiding in the bush.. ).

[jlef5]

I think sh t will always happen, I'm a trady and most places I've worked at in the last two three years have been going on about zero harm, basically should be able to have zero injuries at work. It's not going to happen sure it can be lowered but it will never be zero same as deaths on the road. Why? Because all it takes is a millisecond of wrong choice, not seeing the car, a tyre blowing at the wrong time, or the road condition instantly changing and you're gone. Basically s h it happens and such is life!

[flappist]

The interesting thing is that over that past 30 years the road toll has dropped at about the same rate all over the country.

Places with lots of speed cameras are about the same as those with few or none.
Places with high or open speed limits are about the same as those with low limits.

But the number of accidents is increasing, it is only the increased safety designs of the vehicles that is keeping the death toll down.
Major accidents where no one gets hurt do not show up on statistics (well the ones that they push into the media anyway)

Of course this does not support the revenue and nanny agenda of the government and their do-gooder apologists so is treated as heresy.

[barra265t]

Originally Posted by flappist

The interesting thing is that over that past 30 years the road toll has dropped at about the same rate all over the country.

Places with lots of speed cameras are about the same as those with few or none.
Places with high or open speed limits are about the same as those with low limits.

But the number of accidents is increasing, it is only the increased safety designs of the vehicles that is keeping the death toll down.
Major accidents where no one gets hurt do not show up on statistics (well the ones that they push into the media anyway)

Of course this does not support the revenue and nanny agenda of the government and their do-gooder apologists so is treated as heresy.

Flappist for Transport Minister..

[sudszy]

A great opinion piece with absolutely no supporting references.

Originally Posted by flappist

The interesting thing is that over that past 30 years the road toll has dropped at about the same rate all over the country.

"about" is perhaps a good word to use, dont have to justify anything.

Originally Posted by flappist

But the number of accidents is increasing,.

Per km travelled, per 1000 vehicles, total? perhaps tell us where you got this stat?

Originally Posted by flappist

Major accidents where no one gets hurt do not show up on statistics (well the ones that they push into the media anyway)

so if they dont show up on statistics, how do you know about them, or indeed that accidents are increasing.


For actual collisons, why not consult the insurance industry, the last report I heard was that they are decreasing per 1000 vehicles, (well that would be only claims made). Interesting, two panel beaters in my location have closed down due to lack of work.

[flappist]

Originally Posted by sudszy

A great opinion piece with absolutely no supporting references.


"about" is perhaps a good word to use, dont have to justify anything.



Per km travelled, per 1000 vehicles, total? perhaps tell us where you got this stat?



so if they dont show up on statistics, how do you know about them, or indeed that accidents are increasing.


For actual collisons, why not consult the insurance industry, the last report I heard was that they are decreasing per 1000 vehicles, (well that would be only claims made). Interesting, two panel beaters in my location have closed down due to lack of work.

Well right now you have ZERO credibility on here.

Tell us all where you work, what state you are in and what sort of driving you do because right now you are just an invisible entity that is pushing pro speed camera agenda.

If you have something to say and an opinion have the balls to let people know who and what you are.........

[gtxb67]

Originally Posted by flappist

Well right now you have ZERO credibility on here.

Tell us all where you work, what state you are in and what sort of driving you do because right now you are just an invisible entity that is pushing pro speed camera agenda.

If you have something to say and an opinion have the balls to let people know who and what you are.........

actually, i applaud sudszy

it takes courage to go against the grain instead of the easy option

i am just waiting for him to jump on the harley davidson forums and preach about the benefits of front number plates, full face helmets, hard wired lights, rope safety barriers, noise polution. maybe he could go to a club meeting and change their opinions in person. i am sure they will be welcoming especially since safety is his only concern

[sudszy]

Originally Posted by flappist

Well right now you have ZERO credibility on here.

Tell us all where you work, what state you are in and what sort of driving you do because right now you are just an invisible entity that is pushing pro speed camera agenda.

If you have something to say and an opinion have the balls to let people know who and what you are.........

So, thats a no to verfiying anything in your previous post?

[prydey]

sudzy - the world is not black and white. its easy to sit there and type away and say that if you don't speed you won't get caught, but do you seriously believe the driving standards haven't decreased with everyone being paranoid about speeding and being caught for extremely minor indescretions?!!

luckily my car has cruise control and i use it nearly every time i get in my car, but many cars don't and its extremely easy to find yourself doing 63 in a 60, just by going down a slight hill or concentrating on driving and looking out the big clear screen in front of you and just keeping up with traffic.

it is impossible for a speed camera to save lives. if i went through a speed trap and then caused an accident up the road resulting in a fatality, could i sue the government??

you will never convince me that 60 is safe and 63 is dangerous.

sezzy - i don't think anyone is condoning speeding or advocating that you drive above the limit. the fact is, that 100% of people on the road, will at some point, drive beyond a speed limit somewhere. that makes everyone hypocrits when they say 'don't speed, don't get caught'!

[flappist]

Originally Posted by sudszy

So, thats a no to verfiying anything in your previous post?

And the as usual total avoidance of you answering the question.

Why are you so afraid of revealing anything about yourself?

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by flappist

The interesting thing is that over that past 30 years the road toll has dropped at about the same rate all over the country.

Places with lots of speed cameras are about the same as those with few or none.
Places with high or open speed limits are about the same as those with low limits.

But the number of accidents is increasing, it is only the increased safety designs of the vehicles that is keeping the death toll down.
Major accidents where no one gets hurt do not show up on statistics (well the ones that they push into the media anyway)

Of course this does not support the revenue and nanny agenda of the government and their do-gooder apologists so is treated as heresy.

Not having a go at you but thought you might like to see the 2006-07 figures for serious road accidents.

LINK

Summary of report for 2006-07 injuries:

Land transport
Land transport accidents accounted for 0.7% of all hospitalisations and 11.4% of all
hospitalisations due to injury in Australia during 2006–07.
There were 52,066 persons seriously injured due to land transport injury, resulting in 232,290
patient days in hospital and a mean length of stay of 4.5 days.
Of those seriously injured, 63.0% (n = 32,777) were due to traffic (on-road) accidents, while
26.2% (n = 13,639) were due to non-traffic (off-road) accidents. For 10.9% (n = 5,650) of
serious injury cases, the location was not specified.
Males were 2.2 times more likely than females to be seriously injured as a result of a land
transport accident, while just over 50% of those seriously injured were aged less than
30 years.
When looking at mode of transport, car occupants accounted for 34.8% (n = 18,128) of all
serious injury cases, followed by motorcyclists (26.4%, n = 13,726) and pedal cyclists
(17.8%, n = 9,246).
For traffic (on-road) accidents, 49.5% of those seriously injured were car occupants,
22.3% were motorcyclists and 14.6% were pedal cyclists, while for non-traffic (off-road)
accidents, 43.4% were motorcyclists, 30.6% were pedal cyclists and only 9.5% were car
occupants.
Road vehicle traffic crashes
For those seriously injured due to traffic (on-road) accidents, 28.2% were judged to be
suffering from injuries which were considered to be high threat to life.
When looking at injury rates in relation to the number of registered vehicles, motorcyclists
had by far the highest rate of 1,430 serious injury cases per 100,000 registered vehicles. This
was more than 10 times the rate for car occupants.
When looking at injury rates in relation to the number of kilometres travelled, motorcyclists
also had by far the highest rate of 385 serious injury cases per 100 million kilometres
travelled. This was more than 37 times the rate for car occupants.
Trends
For the period from 2000-01 to 2006-07, there was an increase of 47% in age-standardised
rates of serious injury for motorcyclists and an increase of 47% in rates for pedal cyclists. All
other modes of transport recorded only relatively small changes in rates over this period. A
similar pattern was seen for those seriously injured with high threat to life injuries.
Rates for the Northern Territory remained higher than those for all other jurisdictions over
the entire period from 2000–01 to 2006–07. The difference in rates between the Northern
Territory and other jurisdictions over this period was even more pronounced when only
high threat to life cases were considered.

[SEZ213]

I have held my tongue whilst reading this thread, read the rhetoric and standard 'nanny state' comments and up until that point, discussion was well founded and rational.

My mother always brought me up to question things -authority, standard opinion...anything I wanted...so I shall question this (and no doubt wait for the barage of asinine 'troll' comments that follow)...what gives anyone the right to put someone elses safety in danger, on the roads or anywhere else? The law was put there for a reason whether you like it or not...unless you're an engineer who sets these limitations, who are you to say you should be able to do 120 un a 100 zone? I don't like many of the rules we have in Australia, but that certainly doesn't give me the 'right' to break them...

[GTP owner]

Originally Posted by Sezzy

I have held my tongue whilst reading this thread, read the rhetoric and standard 'nanny state' comments and up until that point, discussion was well founded and rational.

My mother always brought me up to question things -authority, standard opinion...anything I wanted...so I shall question this (and no doubt wait for the barage of asinine 'troll' comments that follow)...what gives anyone the right to put someone elses safety in danger, on the roads or anywhere else? The law was put there for a reason whether you like it or not...unless you're an engineer who sets these limitations, who are you to say you should be able to do 120 un a 100 zone? I don't like many of the rules we have in Australia, but that certainly doesn't give me the 'right' to break them...

I agree with you trying this thought process, however I think that it is naive. We all put each others lives in danger when we travel. Whether we are obeying the speed limit or not. Two cars traveling in opposite directions at 100km/h is a very dangerous situation, and mistakes occur. It is a biological fact - we as living creatures make mistakes. whether intentional or not. If you really wanted to push the ultimate safety weapon, all cars should be limited to 40km/h by law, and anyone exceeding the law just once should be imprisoned because they put someone elses life/child/wife/baby whatever emotive picture you can imagine, in danger, with fatal possible consequences. Think all the way through your argument and this is the ultimate conclusion.

[sleek7]

+1 to Flappist and Gecko.

So long as humans are driving the cars on the roads, there will ALWAYS be deaths & accidents. We are a species that makes mistakes, some mistakes lead to minor consequences, others lead to series consequences (e.g. death and injury).

While I am of the opinion that we should aim for the road toll to be 0, it annoys me how the government so strongly persues an impossible figure.
This would normally then lead on to a rant about if they were serious they would scrap mobile and stationary 'safety' cameras but thats for another day.

[2011G6E]

While there are fallible human beings in charge of motor vehicles, there will always...always...be accidents. The absolute best you can hope for is to minimise them, and in most industrial areas, minimising accidents means increased training of staff.

But if you mention "driver training" it's all too hard...

[gtxb67]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

While there are fallible human beings in charge of motor vehicles, there will always...always...be accidents. The absolute best you can hope for is to minimise them, and in most industrial areas, minimising accidents means increased training of staff.

But if you mention "driver training" it's all too hard...

very true - the problem is that the government's idea of minimising is slowing you down (i realise that not many of us agree they care about anything but money, but they official line is obviously speed kills). the problem is the speed you do is only the secondary problem. the primary problem is the impact itself, but they do not seem to want to do anything to stop them or even lessen the amount of impacts. absolute idiots get licenses - the international scheme is pathetic and yet they do nothing to lift the competance level

in the government's eyes, as long as you do not speed, you are a good driver and therefore we will put more cameras in place to hopefully catch you out and make you into a bad driver, which of course means with all of these bad drivers on the roads, we need more speed cameras to catch them and teach them a lesson etc. etc. etc.


we see the "facts" about how much longer it will take you to stop when doing 5kph more - and yet the braking distance is absolutely irrelevant if the idiot driving is so unaware of their surroundings, they do not hit the brake pedal anyway. the whole system is a joke and people are dying because the government only cares about revenue. i believe they do not want accidents to stop happening. as long as it is no one they care about, the money they get from constant fining of motorists totally outways any death to a nameless, faceless person

[prydey]

Originally Posted by gtxb67

in the government's eyes, as long as you do not speed, you are a good driver and therefore we will put more cameras in place to hopefully catch you out and make you into a bad driver, which of course means with all of these bad drivers on the roads, we need more speed cameras to catch them and teach them a lesson etc. etc. etc.

they used to argue that they only put camera's in 'black' spots. funny how they always seem to coincide with the bottom of a hill or over a blind crest. we have a new underpass built here in s.a. (no i'm serious, s.a. built an underpass!! 20th century here we come) and they now position radar cops 100m up the road to catch you as you come up out of it. black spot? hardly. better than good chance that motorists will increase their speed as they go up the hill - you bet. ka-ching.

[geckoGT]

Originally Posted by gtxb67

we see the "facts" about how much longer it will take you to stop when doing 5kph more - and yet the braking distance is absolutely irrelevant if the idiot driving is so unaware of their surroundings, they do not hit the brake pedal anyway. the whole system is a joke and people are dying because the government only cares about revenue. i believe they do not want accidents to stop happening. as long as it is no one they care about, the money they get from constant fining of motorists totally outways any death to a nameless, faceless person

Interesting thought there that I can see an element of truth in. I can not think of a single fatal that I have been too that all cars involved had hit the brakes, each fatal crash had at least one car that did not brake at all.

My opinion, speed is a factor and no one can say it is not with any certainty, but it is not the only factor and there are some other larger factors that do not get a similar level of attention. That is because the other factors cost money to enforce and are a lot more complex in their management. Speeding is simple to enforce and generates more income than it costs.

Are we doing all we can to improve road safety? No we are not, not from a government or road user perspective and there is always more that can be done. We are however making some progress through a variety of methods and the proof is in the results, statistics show a marked improvement that has been steady for the last 40 years.

[SEZ213]

Oh dear lord, sudzy, just tell them where you're from and the children can return to play...I'm not really sure of it's relevance to this thread, but hey, you may as well humour them, for I fear they won't let it go