The government has released a document on improving road safety in New Zealand, called “Safer Journeys“. There is quite a wide variety of measures being looked at to improve road safety. These include raising the driving age from 15 to 16, ensuring that learner drivers get more experience before getting their restricted license, fixing up right-hand turning rules to improve safety, reducing blood-alcohol limits and other measures. Most of these seem pretty sensible.
However, what seems to have been ignored are measures to simply reduce the number of people driving on our roads. If we look at the road toll in recent years 2008 stands out like a beacon:
In 2009 the toll jumped back to around 400 I think, making 2008 the year which had the lowest toll by quite some margin. So what happened in 2008? The answer there is higher petrol prices, so therefore people drove less. Traffic volumes on many parts of the state highway network were down 10% in 2008 compared with the same month the year before.
If one was being provocative, you could argue that we need to raise petrol taxes significantly so that driving is made more expensive – as therefore history seems to show that fewer people will die on our roads. Alternatively, we could improve public transport, walking and cycling so that people have more options when it comes to getting around. It’s a pity that has not been given greater consideration in what otherwise seems to be a fairly well thought through document.
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Working in an ‘Accident Research Centre’ funded largely by the Victorian equivalent of Transit NZ and GM-Holden I am faced by this every day. So much money is poured into designing cars and roads to be safer and trying to change peoples behaviour away from what they would otherwise do… but no one (except occasionally me) ever suggests we look at reducing how often and how long people spend on the road (i.e. reduce exposure).
The classical injury prevention process follows a fairly logical model:
The first step is to try and remove the hazard entirely
If the hazard cannot be removed, the second step is to isolate the hazard
If the hazard cannot be isolated, the third step is to minimise exposure to the hazard
If exposure to the hazard cannot be minimised then the final step is to reduce the effects of exposure.
In regard to road transport, the seems to go about the process backwards. The focus is foremost on the final step “making roads and cars safer” which in other terms means making traffic crashes more survivable (things like designing cars with airbags and seatbelts and keeping trees and other barriers away from highways), and the second to last step of minimising exposure, i.e “preventing crashes” through things like good corner design, antilock breaks and driver education campaigns. But they skip the first two steps which have the potential to save the most lives, i.e eliminating or reducing the need for people to be on the road in the first place.
More precisely, higher petrol prices discouraged the travel of those groups (notably the young) who tend to be at much higher risk on the roads. Road risk is certainly not uniform; and men, particularly young men, are at measurably higher risk than women. On the other hand, with age comes lower risk (more experience, less risky behaviours). Over time, though, roads and cars *are* much safer than they were. The investment has made a huge difference.
Ross, I’m not denying that a lot can and has been done with road and car safety, indeed my associates and their predecessors have made excellent progress and saved a lot of lives, often on a pretty tight budget too.
But personally I think limiting exposure should be part of the equation too. As you say those most at risk groups might be the first to go so to speak, so the dividend of shrinking the driver pool by say 10% might pay of in a greater than 10% reduction in crashes and deaths.
That is so true – since I got rid of my car, my chances of having a driving accident have plummeted! I think your idea of raising the cost of petrol is a great idea but realistically this will happen anyway as the oil runs out. And NZ is not going to be priority number one for oil supplies!
Unity
http://www.aucklandcyclechic.blogspot.com/
The problem in Auckland is that cycling is probably far more dangerous than driving – due to a lack of adequate cycling infrastructure.
“If we look at the road toll in recent years 2008 stands out like a beacon”
I’m not convinced it does. I see a gradual and reasonably constant reduction each year, with an anomalously high number of deaths in 2007. But the figures bounce around from month to month, with November 2007 being example of how a single month can skew the total for a year. If 2007 had turned in a figure of (say) 380 deaths, then you’d be looking at an almost constant rate of reduction over the period.
Was 2007 caused by low petrol prices? I wasn’t in NZ that year, but I don’t recall Aussie petrol prices being significantly lower than in 2008.
I don’t doubt that higher petrol prices result in less driving, and that less driving leads to a lower road toll. Both must be true. But I suspect that safer cars and safer roads are largely responsible for improved road safety over the long period.
All I can say is 1 death for every 300 million passenger trips taken on the Underground…
The toll in 2009 was 384, a fairly big jump up from 2008 levels. There were also just over 2500 people “seriously injured” in crashes in 2009.
Based on those five years alone I doubt you would find any significance in the trend line. While the dip in 2008 suggests something might have been at work there it is also well within any reasonable confidence interval, meaning that statistically you couldn’t separate it from random variation.
Interestingly enough though, when Steven Joyce was asked to explain why the road toll in 2009 was around 20 higher the year before he pointed to lower petol prices leading more people to drive further compared to 2008.
“The toll in 2009 was 384, a fairly big jump up from 2008 levels”
It’s a difference of 18. That’s not a big jump by any measure. There are individual months where the difference between 2007 and 2008 is greater than 18.
I did read some commentary on this once by MoT pointing out that public transport is by miles the safest mode of travel in NZ. However, sadly, that doesn’t seem to have filtered through to the strategy
I can tell you that in Victoria public transport users account for only 0.6% of people admitted to hospital for transport accidents, and most of those are due to buses and trams colliding with other vehicles.
For reference, pedestrians account for 9%, cyclists 16%, motorcyclists 19% and car and truck drivers 55%.
This doesn’t take into account usage rates of course, it is just a basic frequency, but I do know there are a hell of a lot more public transport users than cyclists or motorcyclists for sure!
“I did read some commentary on this once by MoT pointing out that public transport is by miles the safest mode of travel in NZ. However, sadly, that doesn’t seem to have filtered through to the strategy.”
Well, there is pretty much no place in the world where that is a big selling point, even though it is true (and even without the ample statistics to back it up, almost self-evident).
Can’t beat the bullet train. Over 6 Billion passengers, 0 fatalities. Truly amazing.
Same with TGV. High Speed rail operating on exclusive rights of way is by far the safest mode.
Oh, Jarbury – this article has government itself attributing the road toll falls to the fuel price/lower driving. No details though.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10631269