It is not surprising that a spike in the number of fatalities on our roads creates plenty of concern and stimulates discussion and controversy, it is something which could be called the crash statistics effect.
Crash statistics on our roads this year have increased and government will be obliged to do something about it. It does not look good for any government to preside over a period of time in which more of our citizens die on our roads than they did last year or in the last 10 years, but that is what is happening at the moment and there will be an inevitable reaction from the government.
The problem is there are no easy targets which the government can turn to, which will guarantee them any kind of improvement in the overall stats. In global terms, we already have relatively low death rates on our roads and any improvements in those numbers are incremental and very difficult to achieve.
Most people with a lot of on-road experience will tell you that the best way to improve road safety outcomes on our highways is to improve the behaviour of the drivers of the lighter vehicles, i.e. car drivers and van drivers. However, apparently, drivers of light vehicles vote and therefore some governments find it very difficult to blame them for anything at all, and secondly to impose anything which could be conceived as being onerous upon them.
However, when it comes to dealing with people working in the trucking industry, most governments appear to believe that they don’t vote and, therefore, their opinion is not quite as important as that of the people driving the light vehicles.
In political terms, it is easier to impose restrictions upon professional drivers working in the trucking industry, in order to give the impression that you are doing something about an issue, than it is to actually target the most obvious issue around road safety, which is the lack of driving skill, training and behaviour change among those light vehicle drivers.
It is also regarded as bad form for anybody involved in the trucking industry to say that the crash statistics blip is being caused by the drivers of those cars, who, statistics tell us, are at fault in around 80 per cent of all accidents involving trucks in which there is a fatality.
It does not matter how many times we repeat this statistic, we can be sure that this will be taken note of and then ignored by those making policy. Professional truck drivers are always an easier target and will be disproportionally blamed for issues around safety on our highways.
We may already be safer, better trained and highly monitored, but we are still going to have to improve our behaviour on the highway, because the vast majority of drivers, in light vehicles, will not be improving theirs any time soon. Bring on autonomous cars!
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