"Seven killed in motorway crash."
That's three more than in the Hatfield rail crash, yes? However, nothing big will follow. There'll be no shutting down of the motorway network, no fifty zillion pounds spent on new safety measures that won't be. And quite right too.
The big difference between road safety and train safety is that road safety is in your hands. If you drive carefully you can pretty much guarantee not to get killed in your car, or to kill anyone else.
This is a controversial claim, but I believe it to be true. I remember once hinting to my father, just to make conversation, that there could be, you know, an articulated lorry out there with your name on it. He went ballistic. No. If you drive correctly, you can see such things coming and be ready if they start to make their potentially fatal move. You clock all the potential accidents in your path. That kid on the pavement, who might step out without looking. That car approaching from the side road. Those elderly pedestrians crossing, who might drop something and stop to pick it up instead of getting out of the way. The sports car approaching in the mirror. The safe driver thinks about accidents that are about to happen, in the same kind of relentless way that all men are supposed to be thinking all the time about sex. The safe driver mentally undresses every situation, so to speak, for its accident potential. And that way, he drives without blemish, decade after decade.
I believe my dad had a point. He did drive decade after decade without blemish.
And I believe that millions of others also agree. Millions agree with my dad that all deaths on the roads are the fault of the drivers involved, all of the drivers involved. If any one of the drivers involved had been driving like my dad did instead of how they actually did, there'd have been fewer deaths and maybe none at all. It's tough on passengers who die on the roads. But they could have created a culture of safety instead of nagging dad to go faster, so they too deserved to die, if they did.
They cause death on the railways. Road deaths? They're up to us. This is what everyone thinks, and everyone is right.
Deaths on the railways are pointless and horrible. On a truly excellent railway, there are no deaths whatsoever. Deaths on the road are necessary – inevitable even – to slow us all down.
That's why we make more fuss about train deaths than road deaths, and that's why we are right.
Road safety rather than rail safety
Yesterday, seven people died when a minibus carrying fourteen holidaymakers to Manchester Airport crashed on the M56, half-way through it's
Where Worlds Collide on July 11, 2003
Comments
Even at the "only 95% true" level, this really does explain the difference in public reaction to deaths.
It's the same as deaths caused by murder and smoking. Smoking is thousands of times more dangerous than roaming psycopaths, but it's your own stupid fault.
Posted by Patrick on July 11, 2003Is it your own stupid fault if you are driving down the road and a car coming in the other direction swerves onto the wrong side of the road because the driver has fallen asleep or his tyre has blown out or any other reason. I think it is true that most people who die in car accidents (even those technically "not at fault") would not die if they took more care, but I tend to think that if you exclude all road deaths except the type I am talking about above, you would "still" find that car travel is more dangerous than rail travel.
I think there may be some truth in this being part of the reason why we are less concerned about road deaths, but I find the generalised argument unconvincing.
Posted by Michael Jennings on July 11, 2003I'm with Michael on this one. Millions of people may think that drivers are solely responsible for their own safely, but millions of people believe in things like Astrology or Socialism. Doesn't make them right.
Posted by Tim Hall on July 11, 2003I think there is some merit to the argument that careful drivers are at less risk, but also that driving gives an illusion of greater control than drivers actually have. Do you really drive slowly enough that if some stupid kids steps off the pavement in front of you you could be sure to stop without hitting them? I don't see many people doing so, in any case.
The real difference seems to me that most road deaths are individually small incidents - each individual who is run over in suburbia not being newsworthy - whereas rail crashes tend to involve a larger number of people being killed or injured at once, and then disruption being caused that affects many thousands for hours, days or even months. It means they get so much more news coverage that we still remember the Hatfield crash, whereas at least 4 people will have died on UK roads every day since then, but we aren't being constantly reminded.
Posted by eldan on July 14, 2003I didn't mean that it IS your own stupid fault, I mean that that is the public perception. Especially for the spectacular crashes that make the news, they are often someone doing 50 over the speed limit, drunk and 17 years old.
So the public perception is that careful drivers don't get killed, or are far less likely to do so. Whereas in a train you have no control at all, you are totally in the hands of whoever is driving, setting the signals etc.
The actual accident rate is lower, but there is no feeling of control.
Like smoking, the smoker feels in control of their actions, the non-smoker is smugly aware that they ARE in control of their actions, so the death toll is no where near as scary as the uncontrolled actions of serial killers, despite their microscopic numbers.
Posted by Patrick on July 16, 2003It is possible to greatly reduce the likelihood of being involved in an accident by driving not just "carefully" but what is known as "defensively" - it is, by the way, and for obvious reasons, how motorcyclists are taught to ride. It requires making the assumption that if an accident could happen it might, and being ready to take evasive action. At the lowest possible level it should govern movements made at junctions, or approaches to traffic lights (where people assume wrongly that other drivers will actually do what they are signalling).
The "act of god" accident is neither here nor there as far as this goes, and requires the careful attention of a top class actuary to relate it statistically to (a) all motor journeys; (b) individual motor journeys; (c) the motor journeys of defensive drivers/riders.
I am surprised no reference is made to the falls in mortality in road accidents, and the relevance of accident response, emergency medical treatment and car body construction.
I think that the heightened blood pressure I experience whenever I use public transport of any sort, but especially long-distance trains, is a very great deal more dangerous to me than any road hazard. Indeed, avoiding trains will probably save me from premature death due to cardiac arrest or cerebral disaster.
Posted by Charlie B. on July 16, 2003Permalink
frankly, you can 'believe it to be true' but you should back up a claim with some evidence rather than the motoring history of a single careful driver.
no matter how well you drive someone else can still hit you. Motorways can be a particular pproblem. you can keep the correct distances from the cars in front and be aware of the traffic around you but if a car suddenly swerves in front of you then no matter how good a driver you are...
and there's much more traffic on the roads than in previous decades.
but there is a point you hit on. At least 95% of 'accidents' can be identified as involving driver error and a frightening number of these errors come into the category of "looked but did not see" and many innocent victims may not have been paying too much attention to other traffic when 'accidents' occurred. Perhaps we shouldn't call them 'accidents' at all - they don't occur through blind chance
I live near that motorway junction where the crash occurred. Two lanes join on to a three lane motorway and a few people I know are wary of it as some idiots tend to fly out of the slip road on to the main motorway. there have been accidents before. It looks like there were other reasons for this crash but would your dad be prepared for another driver coming out of nowhere and flying into the side of his car?
Posted by johnh on July 10, 2003