Are the roads to blame? Britain's "killer roads" under investigation; Fabulous turnout for women's Winter Wonder Ride; Artist's bike maps of London go viral; Vaccine required to race in France; Beeb's bike lane bulletins catch on + more on the live blog

wycombewheeler wrote:

Secret_squirrel wrote:

They catch people committing crimes and take them off the road, so they are only effective after the fact.  So for lack of enforcement to have an impact people have to be consciously thinking 2 things

"There are no rozzers"

"I'll drive like a tosser".

But we want to take them off after the fact of driving poorly, not after the fact of hitting someone. Because if we catch and punish dangerous/carless driving, speeding, phone use etc. The the accidents will fall. As the bad drivers will either amend their ways or be banned.

[...]

Amen to that. The "accident" is the thing we want to prevent in the first place. I think this is missing from the whole picture and it goes together with "pass your test and have a rest". There is effectively no "feedback" for drivers to tell them they're doing a poor job - up to the point which someone / something gets damaged. And yes - that might not "stop" you either.  The exceptions I can think of:

a) You were *very* unlucky and police spotted you (e.g. no lights) and had a word.  b) You got a speeding / parking penalty - which people largely consider socially acceptable and an imposition by the authorities. c) Feedback from other drivers - is problematic considering what most think is "how you should drive" and in any case highly unlikely to trigger anything other than "what a @$%t!" in the recipient.

We even shy from the issue of people being medically incapable to drive.  Is it not still the case that effectively they have to volunteer to turn in their licence, doctors can't suggest the DVLA make enquiries etc.?

chrisonatrike wrote:

We even shy from the issue of people being medically incapable to drive. Is it not still the case that effectively they have to volunteer to turn in their licence, doctors can't suggest the DVLA make enquiries etc.?

The DVLA model of responsibility is that every driver is responsible for self reporting on a set of disabilities.

Once you do that, they will tell you which test centers can test and tell DVLA that your sight meets the standard required to resume driving, for example.

So realistically there will be a minority who are not fit to drive and don't comply with their responsibility to self report.

It's such weak regulation that you couldn't make it up... Without the Traffic Division standards and compliance will only fall.

Secret_squirrel wrote:

...I'm unconvinced Rozzer priorities are the major cause tbh.  By definition enforcement is a lagging metric.  They catch people committing crimes and take them off the road, so they are only effective after the fact.  So for lack of enforcement to have an impact people have to be consciously thinking 2 things

"There are no rozzers"

"I'll drive like a tosser"...

Having learnt to drive and having driven in N.I. for a good chunk of "The Troubles" one was very much aware our police cars were unmarked and to drive like a tool inevitably meant you got pulled in. You could of course try and outrun a Land Rover, though you ran the risk of being rammed by another LR at the next junction!! You did get used to little clues that would give either the following or preceding vehicle away.  I remember being in London with the Scouts as a young teen and we were crowding round a 'jam sandwich' taking pictures as none of us had seen a marked police car before. 

Sadly the country had some of the highest KSI figures in the U.K. but that was mainly on empty rural roads where young lads had a tendency to floor it and loose control on roads that normally would be driven pretty safely. We also had some really brutal and graphic public information films regarding road safety which makes the GB ones pretty tame in comparison. 

giff77 wrote:

[...]

Sadly the country had some of the highest KSI figures in the U.K. but that was mainly on empty rural roads where young lads had a tendency to floor it and loose control on roads that normally would be driven pretty safely. We also had some really brutal and graphic public information films regarding road safety which makes the GB ones pretty tame in comparison. 

...and did that work?

I think so. I know they heavily influenced a number of my peers. Some of the ads have been banned pre watershed and when shown in the cinema tend to be rated to the same certification as the main feature. In 1971 there was 371 road deaths. Forty years later that had dropped to under 50 in 2012. Whilst there has been advances in tech. There's also been huge advances in attitudes of drivers. Whenever I cycle back home I actually feel safer than I do here in Scotland. I've attatched a couple links. One is a report about the public info films. The other is a link to YouTube with a number of the films over the years. It's quite long but will give an idea. Some of them my heart goes cold at the beginning as I know what's coming. 

https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/irelands-history-of-graphic-safe-dr...

https://youtu.be/dcdjgpOVy08

Thanks for posting, I remember these. The early ones were filmed near where I grew up, the boy racer in the Fiesta passes my old primary school on the wrong side of the road, the collision was filmed at a nearby crossroads. And the barrelrolling drunk footballer was filmed in a garden on my bus route home from secondary school. 

Didn't realise fatalities had fallen as far as 50-ish, was still high 100s in the early nineties.

No probs. The DoE and RUC/PSNI have made massive inroads regarding road safety. Sadly the figures have crept back over 50 for 2020. Though they're attributing that to less traffic during the lockdowns. 
 

I remember seeing a Road Safety film in Scotland when I first moved and thinking. Is that it? Where's the heart in mouth?  But they really did the job. 

marmotte27 wrote:

"the ‘responsibility pedants’ among the site’s readers.

We all know the type – the ones who jump into the comments section of a news story to point out (and rightly so) that it wasn’t a car that struck the cyclist, but the motorist driving the car."

I'm with the pedants on this one.

It's interesting that people are starting to figure out that RTC reporting is horribly skewed to favour the motorist. This is not accidental (!) but a result of campaigns by the motoring lobby stretching back to the 1930s to influence media to deflect blame away from poor driving and categorise them as 'accidents' and de-personalising them with language such as 'hit by a car'.

I see it more as a push-back than being pedantic.

marmotte27 wrote:

.....I'm with the pedants on this one.

I'M Pedanticus!

No I'm Pedanticus

Erm, I'm Pedanticus.

Captain Badger wrote:

marmotte27 wrote:

.....I'm with the pedants on this one.

I'M Pedanticus!

Statisticus, Statisticus, Statisticus Pedanticus.

On the button as ever - it is obviously the ROADS in the BBC story that are killing people, not drivers breaking the law, as that is something they never do.

The correct form of words would be that a motorist drove a car into a pedestrian/ cyclist/ other car.

Roads don't kill people - Garages do.

I didn't stab him m'lud it was the knife (wot I was holding)

Got to love NG.  Pedantically posts about pedants being 100% wrong "(as usual)".

Looking forward to the Netflix special

No, he was referring to the fact that WING MIRRORS can't possibly be hitting cyclists, because of course there are only DOOR MIRRORS now. Or something. (With the exception of Captain Badger's badgerwagon if I recall).

He's basically going for the automotive equivalent of the NRA slogan - "cars don't kill people, people kill people". Of course this trope was perpetuated by journalistic backside-covering - the car can't sue...

I've tried!

I was thinking the same. Really don't think I can be bothered to spend half and hour getting annoyed and shouting at the TV tonight. If somebody else could do it for me and post the review in tomorrow's blog that would be perfect.

It looks like Ryan's on the case! And apparently we are "responsibility pedants"!

@Ryan just to be clear my wife would be happy to confirm that it isn't just responsibility that I am pedantic about!

This is clearly why the Govt hates the Beeb.  I mean: peddling conspiracy theories about maneating tarmac!  Ridiculous. 

SimoninSpalding wrote:

Meanwhile, I see the BBC are blaming roads for an increase in fatalities, along with a lack of police.

Whilst more enforcement and better road design could help, all of the dashcam footage of accidents in the report appears to show people driving like tw@ts. I cant be bothered to watch Panorama tonight to see whether this is mentioned. Maybe we can have an update on tomorrow's blog?

Repeating what I said on the forum discussion - 

Just seen a bit on BBC news about it - they balmed the increase in deaths on

- fewer dedicated traffic police

- fewer breathalysers

- significant number of speed cameras switched off.

Resulting in a road network with fewer checks; leading to some drivers being more likely to drive more dangerously; and therefore making roads more dangerously.

And to add - they didn't blame road design.

From the trailer, it appears that they will be blaming lack of police, and bad road design, not drivers.  Sorry to be pedantic (is my responsibility pedant's badge in the post?) but it's drivers.  Will they be focussing, or even mentioning, the increase in mobile phone calling, the government's abject failure to legislate properly on phones, or to provide safe infrastructure for cycling?

Will they even mention cyclists at all?  Probably not, as we all know, it's as much as the BBC can do to admit that we exist.

I wonder if they will mention SUVs as a contributing factor towards the increase in fatalities. Being that you are more likely to die in an SUV 

Sssssshhh...

Don't tell them that, they often buy them because they feel safer...