A tangential discussion is developing on my post of last week regarding Jeremy Vine’s hit list of undesirable vehicles – in the opinion of his intellectually challenged listeners.
I can go along with Neil Harding when he points out that vehicle design has evolved and in doing so improves road safety as a consequence:
The number of deaths from accidents in cars and on the road was significantly reduced by car manufacturers improving design…
It’s the rest of the sentence with which I take issue:
…people’s actions had nothing to do with it.
Peoples’ actions have everything to do with it. I stand firmly behind my earlier comment in the discussion:
As I’ve pointed out before, cars are not dangerous, bikes are not dangerous; cycles are not dangerous; people are. A machine; any machine; only become dangerous when it is used inappropriately.
Any machine used inappropriately can be dangerous. Cars are benign until the driver turns the ignition. It is then that the risk is imported; human activity is what makes driving dangerous, not the machinery itself; just as human activity is responsible for it being safe. This is why I become somewhat animated when the hard of thinking seek to lecture me on “dangerous” bikes. Bikes are not dangerous; motorcycling can be; it all depends upon how one does it. And therein lies the fundamental philosophical difference between us. You see, Neil proffers external factors as a means of mitigation:
So road safety laws, speed reductions, types of vehicles etc. are all important.
Up to a point, cobber, up to a point. Good road safety law is that which sets a framework for the industry to work effectively without being overly restrictive on the end user. For example, setting minimum standards and assessment regimes of those working within the driver and rider training industry. When I learned to ride a motorcycle, I was told where the brakes, throttle and clutch were and then pretty much left to get on with it. Today a new rider has no option but to undergo basic training with a qualified professional before riding alone. I foresee similar moves being adopted with their four wheel counterparts and moves are afoot to bring the trainer training industry into the same regime. This gives the public a yardstick, an assurance that their trainers have reached a minimum standard. It also seeks to improve the overall standard of trainers and, hopefully, the overall standards achieved by their learners.
So, to suggest that people have had nothing to do with improvements in road safety is tosh. Which is why my reply was somewhat terse.
Risk Management
In my original piece, I pointed out that the risks associated with riding a motorcycle were manageable. They are. All road safety risks are manageable. But at any time we have to bear in mind that risk is a factor of life; that any form of human transport involves risk and will take a toll in human life. It always has and it always will. The aim is to reduce this to as low as reasonably practicable; balancing the risk with the benefits of making the journey.
There are two basic philosophies of risk management. Safe plant and safe person. I offer no prizes for guessing which is the more prevalent in our risk averse society. Safe plant is the logic that gave us the abrasive wheels regulations that were so restrictive that they made abrasive wheels unworkable. It is the philosophy that believes that we must be protected from ourselves and our environment by a benevolent state or employer or whoever; anyone but ourselves. Beguiling though it is, this philosophy is what gives us the “itselfansafetyinnit” culture. The culture that when tripping over a paving slab seeks to sue the council rather than make a mental note to look where one is going in the future, the philosophy that abdicates all personal responsibility. It is a culture that has infantilised our society.
The safe person however, offers something much more dynamic. This is the person who having been educated, takes that philosophy and applies it in any environment; the workplace, the road, the home and so on. The safe person is transferable. It is the safe person who is best utilised to ensure safety on the roads, the highly educated and motivated road user who anticipates and avoids hazards before they become accidents. If I should become involved in an accident, it will be my fault. Whoever causes the situation to arise, it will be my fault for not anticipating their act or omission, for not recognising their negligence, for not getting out of the way of their accident; for not seeing it coming. The safe person takes personal responsibility for his actions and omissions.
Sure, my modern BMW is better built and has better tyres and brakes than the twenty four year old Yamaha that sits next to it in my garage. Do I appreciate that it has anti-lock brakes? Indeed. Have I ever used the anti-lock facility? No. I don’t need the state or vehicle manufacturers to make me safe (although I will cheerfully make the most of modern technology). I do that for myself; it’s called defensive driving.
The cotton wool wrapping of belts, bags, crumple zones, side impact bars etc can engender the ‘I’m safe I can drive how I like attitude”, cars embedded in the hedges and ditches on rural roads attest to that every Sunay morning. Victor Papanek in ‘Design for the Real World’ suggests a row of spikes on the dash to keep the mind focussed on safe driving.
Defensive driving means constantly scanning for a soft spot.
It was put to me when I was training for my IAM test many moons ago that defensive riding was the practice of avoiding other people’s accidents. That’s how I still tend to view it.
A big spike in the centre of the steering wheel is another variant of the real world design I’ve come across. If the world was a little more dangerous, we would be a little more adept at the business of survival. 😉
“A machine; any machine; only become dangerous when it is used inappropriately.”
But isn’t the appropriate use of a gun/tank/bomb etc to cause damage/harm?
The design of a machine and the type of machine, alters the risk factor. We know that statistically the same person is more likely to kill a child if they drive a 4×4 than if they drive a Corsa. We know the same person has less control over a vehicle the faster they drive – and high performance cars mean the temptation to drive at reckless speed is more likely to be succumbed to.
There is always a line to be drawn between risk and practicality and anywhere you draw the line is arbitrary. But where we draw the line does matter. Virtually every family in the country knows someone killed or seriously injured by a car. In the developed world, cars have killed more people than all the wars post World War II. Where is the anger that was invoked by the Iraq war over this scandal? We clearly could save lives at a very small practical cost.
Remember the resistance of the motor manufacturers to simple safety measures that cost little to their profits (Ford famously worked out it was cheaper to finance compensation payouts than save lives by changing design). Those who argue against speed restrictions and better enforcement and argue for more roads are placing a small saving in time and short-term convenience over the long-term destruction of the environment and health and safety of millions of people (including themselves and their families).
There is no comparison between weapons and cars; and your insistence on drawing this silly parallel is becoming wearing. You allow your prejudice to overcome reason.
Yet, even so, any of these weapons is benign until put to use.
The line between risk and practicality has been defined in law; it is the balance of cost, difficulty and time against the need to do the job – in this case, the journey. Given the millions of miles travelled by millions of motorists and their passengers, road travel is reasonably safe and an acceptable risk. It’s a risk that can be reduced, but I ride a bike (something like 10 times the risk of driving a car) and I consider it acceptable because it is manageable.
I’m afraid much of “what we know” is mere assertion and prejudice not fact.
That said, I have no objection to technological improvements to vehicles; my bike is bristling with them.
The risk a person wishes to take of injuring themselves is different to the risk they take with other people’s lives, that is where I disagree with you.
You said ‘any machine’ is only dangerous when used ‘inappropriately’. That is why I pointed out that weapons are dangerous when used exactly as intended.
Statistically we know that 4x4s will kill more than Corsas. Don’t we have a responsibility to minimise deaths of others in our society? Especially when the benefits are so small and unfairly distributed. I know it is arbitrary where we draw the line but surely killing more people than all the wars is too high a price (over 3000 deaths and 100,000 injuries EVERY YEAR in the UK alone).
I’m not going to get dragged down a tangent of weapons, because it is not an appropriate parallel; except to point out that in the context of my comment, inappropriate use makes them dangerous to anyone but the enemy. Given that the enemy wants to kill the user of the weapons appropriate use makes them eminently safe. That is the end of discussion of weapons in this thread.
I’m sorry, but you still don’t get it. A 4×4 driven appropriately is no more dangerous than any other vehicle – it is benign until used. Human intervention is what makes it potentially dangerous, not design. You are obsessed with the consequence of the accident. Unfortunately, such blinkered thinking allows the accident to happen and then seeks mitigating measures after the event. My approach is to stop the accident happening in the first place by mitigating the cause. In other words, mine is the professional, common sense, pragmatic approach to risk management used by health and safety professionals world wide. If you get the chance, attend one of IOSH’s Managing Safely Courses and then come back to me to discuss the matter. 😉
I agree that changing behaviour with education makes a difference but so does the type of vehicle, speed limits, etc.
Are you saying that if everyone owned a 4×4 and that if speed limits were abolished that the number of pedestrians killed would not go up?
You fall into a trap here. Speed limits do not make roads safer. Watch peoples’ behaviour where limits are politically imposed as opposed to sensible risk based ones. People slow down where there are enforcement cameras and then speed up again. Laws do not change behaviour for the better where people do not perceive them to be good laws – although the threat of punishment may make a temporary difference.
A good driver is one who regulates speed to suit the conditions – that is separate to speed restrictions imposed by law, which may be either higher or lower than the appropriate safe speed for the situation. Lowering speed limits does not make a bad driver better, nor does it necessarily reduce the likelihood of a collision; it might, depending upon the situation and depending on whether it is being obeyed, so once more we are back to behaviour. Again, we are back to targeting consequence rather than cause.
Driver behaviour is the most important factor in improving road safety – changes and improvements in vehicle technology compliment this. As I said, I have no objection to improved design and while I personally don’t much like 4x4s (particularly when they have bull bars fitted) I have no objection to people who drive them responsibly.
The answer to your question is that neither you nor I know definitively what would happen given that the good drivers will still drive well, no matter what they drive and no matter what the speed restrictions – however, turn the question around; if road users were better behaved and getting a licence was more difficult as a consequence of improving standards and well trained drivers applied those standards in their driving, the incidence of pedestrian injury and death would, in all likelihood; fall.