Road safety culture shock stage two - Not enough dead children

It is perfectly clear that people all over the country are re-evaluating their opinions about road safety policy following revelations yesterday and today.

But we have only just begun back on the road to real road safety.

Television advertisements tells us (quite correctly, as it happens) "If you hit me at 30 there's a 20% chance that I will die. If you hit me at 40 there's a 20% chance that I will live."

Department for Transport data published yesterday [1] tells us that 11,000 child pedestrians were injured in built up areas (30mph AND 40mph speed limits) in 2005. We we should expect that more than 20% of those child pedestrians were killed. Right? That's 2,200 dead children.

But reality is entirely different. 47 child pedestrians were killed in built up areas, amounting to 0.47% of the total. That's one fiftieth of the implied claim.

The real world behaviour that saves the children isn't 'sticking to the speed limit' if it was we would have killed thousands. The real world life saving behaviour is drivers slowing down in areas of danger and braking before impact.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the real world, many minor crashes are unreported, many more take place with no injury and are unreported and countless thousands of incidents take place where appropriate driver behaviour ensures that the child isn't hit at all. So we end up with something like:

Built up areas:

11,000 Child pedestrians injured and reported 20,000 Child pedestrians injured and unreported (estimate) 20,000 Child pedestrians hit but not injured (estimate) 200,000 Child pedestrians involved in 'near misses'. (estimate)-----------------------------------------------250,000 total incidents resulting in 47 deaths.

It doesn't even matter if the estimates are not very accurate. It is OBVIOUS that a great many incidents take place with very few deaths because of drivers responding to the situation ahead. This 'driver response' is at the true core of road safety.

But if the DfT implied claim were true we would have 50,000 dead child pedestrians, not 47.

And it doesn't even stop there, because a significant but unknown proportion of the deaths are due to 'rogue drivers' - possibly disqualified, in stolen cars, blind drunk, unlicenced, underage or whatever. The risk mitigation behaviour of an 'ordinary' driver is even more effective.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "The Department for Transport calls it their '20,30,40 message' I call it deliberately misleading. They think it justifies speed camera policy, I think it damages road safety by forcing road users to concentrate on the wrong safety factor."

"They trot out this rubbish because they are welded to a false belief system.Let me tell them right now that false beliefs will not save lives."

"Department for Transport is not fit for purpose."