Am I doing it wrong... (Road Toll Statistics)

[Grunter]

I decided to search up where the "statistics" come from to get a better understanding on the causes/reasons of fatal accidents.

Firstly went to the QLD Police website and looked at Statistical Review for the 2011-2012 year ( http://www.police.qld.gov.au/Resourc...ts/Traffic.pdf ). Shows some interesting numbers, but only shows number of fatalities (by region) and then the number of offenses (speed cameras (fixed and mobile), drink driving, red light cameras, etc). Didn’t really give much more information on the causes of fatalities.

So from this report I noticed it mentioning “Webcrash Data”. So went looking for that report and found the “Weekly Road Toll Report” (pdf - https://www.webcrash.transport.qld.g.../roadsense.pdf ). This has a much more detailed breakdown on road fatalities and the reasons assigned to the contributing causes. I won’t go into it all, however on part that stood out to me was the “Road Toll by Behaviours and Characteristics” (page 5). The methodology on these numbers do your head in.

Basically most crashes are given one or more causes of the fatality. These are the numbers that are quoted by media, government and police. They are given in numbers by factor/involving/age group/etc. Without going into it, I found these numbers to be interesting. So basically the 20% odd that is quoted being the cause of deaths related to speeding, is not accurate. The 20% can represent ONE of many causes of the fatality. Another cause for the same death could have been “Road and Roadside”, this quoted as being…

“The road and roadside characteristic is attributed to crashes where roadside features or road surface conditions may have contributed to the crash. This includes all crashes where unfavourable road conditions have contributed to a crash, or where the crash nature was hit fixed obstruction or temporary object.”

So getting more detail has shown that speeding is not just exceeding the posted speed limit, but also takes into account speed to the conditions, and not just weather, but objects on the road hit. i.e I could be driving in rain conditions at 70kph in a posted 80kph zone, lose control, hit a fence while not wearing my seatbelt and have a contributing factor in:

Involving Speeding Drivers
Involving Drivers – Wet Road
Road and Roadside
Involving Road Conditions
Unrestrained Vehicle Occupants

It gets even more muddy when you read more fine print…

“Contributing circumstances are circumstances that may have contributed to a unit being involved in a road traffic crash. A contributing circumstance may not necessarily have been the direct cause of a crash.
Any road crash has a complex combination of contributing and causal factors, so there can be any number of contributing circumstances recorded for a single crash. Contributing circumstances are attributed to units involved in the crash (rather than the crash itself), so a single crash may have more than one instance of the same contributing circumstance. In addition, more than one contributing circumstance can be attributed to any unit involved in the crash.
There may be more than one contributing factor for each fatality, therefore the percentages above may add up to more than 100%. “

So I get that technically the stats are right when read in context, but stating individual percentages as the specific problem (i.e speeding 20%) just doesn’t make sense (hopefully someone does get it).

2011/2012 QLD
Total fatalities - 270

Usual suspects quoted by Media/Government/Police Services as the reason for fatalities and speed cameras, RBT’s, etc.:

Reasons that contributed to fatalities were,
Speeding - 22.2%
Drink Drivers - 18.1%
Fatigued - 14.8%
Had no Seatbelt - 24.3%

Reasons not generally mentioned that contributed to fatalities were,
Road and Roadside - 36.7%
Involving drivers
- Illegal Manoeuvrer - 29.3%

Now look at the chart below and remember that this is what they use to quantify the reasons for speed reduction (amongst other items).



Forget what I’ve said though, and look at their statistics and make your own conclusions (or should that be “make up” like what’s being reported).

NB: This is NOT a shot at the police!! Just the way stats are reported.

[GTP-RPD]

Very interesting.

I remember a famous saying that goes " there are lies and damn lies and then there are satistics"

[AWD Chaser]

if your looking for the GOVT source, take a look here:

http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications...bulletins.aspx

This is the database that you can pull your own stats from...

[Quicksand]

Quite interesting, thanks for sharing! It looks like better roads and driver education would go a long way in improving these statistics, when viewed in isolation.

[2011G6E]

A lot of people simply refuse to believe it when you point out that even with the massive increase in cars on the road, the road toll is the lowest it's been for over sixty years (since 1946 to be precise).
http://www.caradvice.com.au/156631/a...st-since-1946/

They've been well and truly brainwashed by the murder death carnage horror road toll stories in the media...

[jpd80]

Interesting that the peak deaths occurred in 197 at around 2,800 and stayed just below this figure until around 1980
when a review of fatalities found that around 44% had a BAC reading over 0.05%. it was at this time that the southern states
adopted random breath testing as a way of correcting unacceptable behaviour of drink driving. beyond that it was decided
that speeding was then ext big factor as most accidents at that time were single motor vehicle accidents. The combination of
random breath testing and active speed monitoring helped reduce road toll to half of it prevoius high even though motor
vehicles have more than tripled......behavior modification of drivers is credited as the reason for todays low tolls...

In rural Qld in the 1970s and 1980, it was fairly common practice to call trips a six pack trip and have a six pack
or a carton of stubbies handy for drivers and passengers to consume on trips..full strength beer that is.

I remember years ago in Gladstone, a QR firemen was getting ready to crew a coal train to Moura when he was done for DD with a BA of 0.31...

[Quicksand]

That and better quality roads, better/safer vehicles, etc etc...

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by Quicksand

That and better quality roads, better/safer vehicles, etc etc...

Most of us old crusties will attest that roads are much better today but the numbers of impatient drivers
prepared to take risks seems to be growing as well, you can almost hear it, everyone else is DH in their way...

[GTP owner]

In Tasmania we have had a massive reduction in speeding fines due to a huge decrease in using civil contractors to run speed cameras (budget restraints). Anyhow, fines went down from 3,500 per month to 400 last month. Gues what happened to the road toll despite a hue and outcry from the media that there will be death and destruction....well it hasn't changed. No surprise there.

[graham7773]

Re stats, one of the current affairs programs reported in the last 48 hours that more than 30% of smashes are caused by dills using there phones while driving. GPS, Ipods and hands free were included in these stats. It follows that 30% of road deaths would be attributable to the same causes. IMO anything that takes your attention/concentration away from the job of driving is going to be hazardous to yours and other road users health.

[Falcman0o7]

Speeding in commys bruv 90%

[IDT]

My 2 cents - The number of Fatalities or even serious injuries over time can't be used as a statistic for comparisons sake. As many others have said already, examples of changes such as safer vehicles, what was bush with 110kph limit 10 years ago and full of Kangaroos and live stock is now a 50kph built up area with speed humps every 500 meters, or even heavy police presence which very rarely if ever come into calculations can have a massive effect. All accidents is the closest you will get and if you did want to break them down into major causes (the sinle biggest cause) it would be something along the lines of:
Driver Error (unintended mistake whilst not breaking the law),
Traffic system failure (i.e crap road no signage etc)
Driver Behaviour (breaking the law)
Vehicle Failure (something in the car broke)

[grandpa_spec_F6]

The government and media would never lie with statistics to push an agenda, go wear your tin foil hat and stop hating on the free world you terrorist!

[302 XC]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

A lot of people simply refuse to believe it when you point out that even with the massive increase in cars on the road, the road toll is the lowest it's been for over sixty years (since 1946 to be precise).


They've been well and truly brainwashed by the murder death carnage horror road toll stories in the media...

Totally agree
QLD had a population spurt of 1500 people per month for ages , yet the death toll increased by a hand full
30,000 mexicans and a few add to the deaths,hardly worthy of spending gazzillions on advertising campaigns
But when the death tolls were reallly looked into,and not blanketed with "Speeding was a factor", youll find a high % was driver error
If the government was that worried about death toll,i mean really worried, it would be standard defensive driving course pre licence,more regular licence upgrades,checks,more regular vehicle inspections,im sure theres more
But they dont or wont make millions a year in revenue if we were all good law abiding citizens driving cars that didnt have modifications or issues

[pursuit2359]

Originally Posted by graham7773

Re stats, one of the current affairs programs reported in the last 48 hours that more than 30% of smashes are caused by dills using there phones while driving. GPS, Ipods and hands free were included in these stats. It follows that 30% of road deaths would be attributable to the same causes.

I'm not sure about this since I would have thought that people were more likely to use phones/ipods while driving in city areas and therefore at lower speeds. So I wouldn't have thought that those 30 per cent of collisions would result in 30 per cent of fatalities.

[GTP-RPD]

well in Sadelaide today we get:

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/s...-1226481393106

I wonder how many were driving high powered cars?

The comments made by the do-gooders and the cop crack me up..

[mik]

Originally Posted by jpd80

Most of us old crusties will attest that roads are much better today but the numbers of impatient drivers
prepared to take risks seems to be growing as well, you can almost hear it, everyone else is DH in their way...

agreed, and i reckon some of the impatience is also attributed to over crowding on the roads, one thing i have noticed with my own driving, having worked in more jobs than i care to admit and working out of many different area`s is you tend to adapt to the surroundings,
for example if you have a relatively easy run to work, you stay cool calm and collected and you take less chances/you attain less bad habits,

or alternatively you have to drive across a busy city like melb/sydney, you become more aggressive , you get used to going for breaks in the traffic, as a result you become more impatient , some people worse than others taking big chances.

[Road_Warrior]

I had to do an FOI to get this sort of information 5 years ago, and in Wait Awhile speeding/speed was 4th on the list of the causes of fatal accidents. Inattention and carelessness were the top two.