The BMJ have recently published a report on injuries due to traffic accidents. They have noted that the serious injury rate has not changed in the last decade pretty much. This is contrary to the police statistics.
Results According to police statistics, rates of people killed or seriously injured on the roads fell consistently from 85.9 per 100 000 in 1996 to 59.4 per 100 000 in 2004. Over the same
time, however, hospital admission rates for traffic injuries were almost unchanged at 90.0 in 1996 and 91.1 in 2004. Both
datasets showed a significant reduction in rates of injury in
children aged <=15 but the reduction in hospital admission
rates was substantially less than the reduction shown in the
police statistics. The definition of serious injury in police
statistics includes every hospital admission; in each year, none
the less, the number of admissions exceeded the number of
injuries reported in the police system.
Conclusions: The overall fall seen in police statistics for
non-fatal road traffic injuries probably represents a fall in
completeness of reporting of these injuries.
Which sounds like double speak for ' we know the official statistics are wrong'. The question is, is this accidental or a deliberate move to hide a total failure of road safety policy? No other country in Europe has seen such lack of improvement. Fatalities amongst young people have doubled in the last decade. If, generally, injuries aren't falling inspite of advances in car design then there is something seriously wrong with the way things are. I'd put the lack of traffic police in most counties as being at the top of the list of reasons why.
Surprise, surprise the government spin machine has gone into full swing to bury this story.
teabelly
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If, generally, injuries aren't falling inspite of advances in car design then there is something seriously wrong with the way things are.
No road investment, or investment for the wrong reasons, most drivers are incompetent/lulled into false sense of security by the very vehicles that should keep them safe, no training after driving test for real world situations, ever bigger and more complicated cars while roads and our brains ability to use x functions at the same time remains the same...
And breathe.
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"No road investment, or investment for the wrong reasons, most drivers are incompetent/lulled into false sense of security by the very vehicles that should keep them safe, no training after driving test for real world situations, ever bigger and more complicated cars while roads and our brains ability to use x functions at the same time remains the same..."
Ermmmm, how about drivers acting in accordance with their licence to drive? Why do we always expect others to do more, to stop us hurting ourselves??? Cars more complicated than before (in terms of their being driven).... I don't think so.
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Fatalities amongst young people have doubled in the last decade
where does it say that?
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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The BMJ report doesn't. It was a recent news item. www.motorinsurance.co.uk/news/1506.html The above report seems to show a near doubling has happened over the last 5 years.
teabelly
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I once caught a civiian admin lady altering my collision report 'because it makes the stats better'.
Nuff said.
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I once caught a civiian admin lady altering my collision report
Why do the police refer to non-police individuals as 'civilians'.
Surely this would only be correct if the police were a military force - which they aren't - are they?
Shorely the correct designation would be 'lay-man '(or woman)
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The police are not a force now; they are called a service! Nuff said!
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I once caught a LAYWOMAN admin lady altering my collision report 'because it makes the stats better'.
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Having worked for the BMA in the dim and distant I would take their statistics with a pinch of salt too. They have a political agenda of their own remember (chiefly involving more money for their members).
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Quite.
SMWBO would never have anything to do with the BMA. To put it bluntly, they are no better than a trade union (though at least not Royal like another lot).
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The police force is an employer with commanding officers displaying badges of rank and as such is a "discipline" service where the "rank" has command and subordinates can be disciplined for not respecting the "rank"
As such, civilian is then the correct usage.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Some Forces have gone all PC and are referring to civillian staff as "Police Staff" which is a might confusing. All employees are now subject to the same discipline code now. In fairness to the Police they were in the early days run by ex military types, hence the terminology (Divisions, Sections).
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drbe - actually 'non-police individuals' aren't called civilians (Midlife is a bit out of date). They're called police staff.
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" once caught a civiian admin lady altering my collision report 'because it makes the stats better'."
Now there's an allegation and a half...any chance of which force and which station, to substantiate that claim?
I'm sure they'd like the chance to respond.
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Now there's an allegation and a half...any chance of which force and which station, to substantiate that claim?
You are of course aware that should midlifecrisis answer your question, I would then have to remove his answer. It's one thing to make a general accusation, but quite another to narrow it down to a name, and or location.
DD.
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" once caught a civiian admin lady altering my collision report 'because it makes the stats better'." Now there's an allegation and a half...any chance of which force and which station, to substantiate that claim? I'm sure they'd like the chance to respond.
I'm sorry I spoke now!! And no, I'm not going to tell you, I made the appropriate representation to the necessary powers at the tme. I posted the message to reinforce the thought that statistics are manipulated as required.
Besides, the lady civilian, laywoman, Police staff or whatever is unlikely to be reading this.
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Police stats are pretty much driven by what the Home Office wants them to record. There are reams of changes each year on what to record and how to record it. That is why Police Stats departments have increased from 1 bloke called "Smiffy" for example, to a dept containing about 20 people.
The police rule is "If we can't measure it, we don't do it" The Home Office rule is "You will measure it, and if it looks really scary to the public we will ask you to measure in a different way until it is less scary"
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I remember a school text book entitled "How to Lie with Statistics"
The BMJ Stats are per 100 000 licence holders.
The government stats are numbers injured - on www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Expodata/Spreadshee...s
Both could be right if the number of license holders have changed!
Oddly enough the published Government stats on their own website stop at 2002 - wonder why that is?
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The only sensible metric is to use is injuries per billion vehicle km. I thought they had used injuries per 100,000 population which would have made greater sense. The number of licence holders has fallen I think and there is a lot of illegal driving which will skew the figures.
teabelly
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The police rule is "If we can't measure it, we don't do it" The Home Office rule is "You will measure it, and if it looks really scary to the public we will ask you to measure in a different way until it is less scary"
I would say that is is true that 'if you can't measure it, you can't manage it'. Unfortunately many things are difficult to measure objectively, are open to political or management meddling and may not need measuring (and thus close managing) in the first place.
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I would say that is is true that 'if you can't measure it, you can't manage it'. Unfortunately many things are difficult to measure objectively, are open to political or management meddling and may not need measuring (and thus close managing) in the first place.
You don't fancy being Home Secretary for a while, do ya mate? It can't be hard, you should see some of the muppets they've let have a go at it lately - and none of them have been able to grasp the concepts you have articulated so beautifully! The corollary of the desperately simplistic 'what gets measured gets done' is that what isn't easy to measure doesn't get done - even though it may be far more important than what you can measure easily. Hence we value what we measure - not measure what we value. Hopeless, hopeless, unprincipled muppets who have brought a once-great service to its knees and enslaved it to making NuLab look ... well I was going to say good, but perhaps 'marginally less incompetent' would be fairer. Ye Gods.
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I think I understood what I thought you said, but what you said wasn't actually what I thought you meant. But as Donald Rumsfeld would say "there are known knowns, and known unknowns.........."
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Surely what's important is that if you're looking for relative trends over time of, say, road traffic accident injuries then you use the same source; ie either consistently use Police data or consistently use BMA data?
Same applies if comparing data from different countries, etc.
And if you're drawing absolute inferences from data then those inferences need to be limited & qualified by the faults in the information gathering process.
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