Thread: Lowest road toll in 90 years - why?

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Next time you undertake a postgraduate degree in trauma or a short certification course in trauma like the EMST# or TNCC* or MIMMS% then you can justify your terminology with them. Personally I will continue to use the terminology of a trauma professional.

# Emergency Management of Surgical Trauma
* Trauma Nursing Core Course
% Major Incident Medical Management & Support

The same terminology is used in HSE/OHS, due to a (questionable) philosophy that all "incidents" (accidents) are preventable.

Any lecturer who knows what they are talking about will tell you that incident and accident have the same meaning and can be used interchangably.

Originally Posted by isuzurover

The same terminology is used in HSE/OHS, due to a (questionable) philosophy that all "incidents" (accidents) are preventable.
.........

While the philosophy is questionable, it is not a bad way of minimising 'incidents' by making the a priori assumption that all accidents are preventable. In fact they probably are - but not if it is necessary to do any useful work. What is needed is to balance the probability of an adverse event against the costs of preventing it, which hopefully is what is done in practice, although this philosophy does tend to mandate ridiculous results!

But your comment on 'accident' and 'incident' being semantically the same reminds me that in another professional area, aviation safety. they have separate, legal, meanings - an accident is where damage or injury occurs, an incident is where it could have occurred due to a non-standard occurrence such as a loss of separation or an engine failure etc.

But in talking to the general public, trying to maintain the distinction is a waste of effort, as can be seen by many of the media reports on aviation 'incidents'!

John

John

I still find it both intriguing and frustrating (as one involved in trauma care) that the effect of medical trauma systems in reducing the road toll is completely ignored by the media, and consequently by the public.
The Melbourne 'Age' yesterday filled pages 1, 2 and 3 with stories on the record low number of road deaths; they highlighted the over-representation of elderly drivers among those killed, making the obvious (to them) conclusion that older drivers are causing a record number of accidents and we need to look at ways of getting them off the road! I think that most people who work in emergency services can testify that it is not elderly drivers who cause serious accidents- it is overwhelmingly young people (yes, everyone will have a story about the scary older driver). Old people simply do not survive their injuries, whereas young people do.

Originally Posted by POD

I still find it both intriguing and frustrating (as one involved in trauma care) that the effect of medical trauma systems in reducing the road toll is completely ignored by the media, and consequently by the public.
The Melbourne 'Age' yesterday filled pages 1, 2 and 3 with stories on the record low number of road deaths; they highlighted the over-representation of elderly drivers among those killed, making the obvious (to them) conclusion that older drivers are causing a record number of accidents and we need to look at ways of getting them off the road! I think that most people who work in emergency services can testify that it is not elderly drivers who cause serious accidents- it is overwhelmingly young people (yes, everyone will have a story about the scary older driver). Old people simply do not survive their injuries, whereas young people do.

You may now revert to post No. 2 of this thread and add your thanks.
As to elderly drivers having increased accident rates no comment has been made that we have an ageing population, ergo, older average driver age, more older drivers on the road therefore increased incidents of older drivers in accidents. A per capita comparison of drivers over a certain age would be a more accurate assessment of older drivers accident rates.

Disclaimer: Only posted due to me about to enter the 'older driver' statistics.

To look at Diana and Johns discussion of what constitutes an accident, in the eyes of the law (and as a sufferer of it I can comment) there is no such thing. Everything is preventable and there is always someone to blame.

Take my case, as a driver with no medical history of blackouts or seizures I still should have foreseen the potential for the event and ticked the box on my license application (that I have a history of them) and so I wouldn't have been driving or at least would have had to be medically cleared to drive when I blacked out and ran off the road.

Oh you hit someone, that's neg driving. Didn't tick the box saying you have a history of something that's never occurred, that's fraud.

Originally Posted by clubagreenie

To look at Diana and Johns discussion of what constitutes an accident, in the eyes of the law (and as a sufferer of it I can comment) there is no such thing. Everything is preventable and there is always someone to blame.

Yes, in our reports we call them 'Collisions' or 'incidents', not 'accidents'.

I deliberately modify my language to use collision or incident myself as a true accident is exceptionally rare. Normally someone has screwed up.

I'm one of those people who like to see the devil in the detail for these things. As POD quite rightly pointed out, advances in trauma care have increased survival rates markedly. This kind of influence was demonstrated in wars as Korea and Vietnam saw the advent of medevac choppers and significant improvements in mortality rates.

The improved passive safety measures in vehicles and improved vehicle design has also lessened injury numbers and severity in crashes.

So, I'd like to see data that draws out the numbers of collisions per registered vehicle numbers; mortality and injury rates as a function of the number of collisions and then factor in on top of all that the distances that we drive.

The end result would be something along the lines that for every km that people drive the incidence of death or injury on the road is 'x' compared to 'y' from 'w' number of years ago.

That'd give us some rather interesting figures and a true measure of the relative risk. The number of factors that contribute to that relative risk are many and varied.

Originally Posted by PeterM

I deliberately modify my language to use collision or incident myself as a true accident is exceptionally rare. Normally someone has screwed up.

In ordinary English, accident simply means something unintended. Are you saying that most incidents are intentional? It is interesting to compare the analysis of aviation accidents with the above "Normally someone has screwed up". In aviation it has long been recognised that accidents do not have a single "cause", but are the result of the interaction of multiple factors, and investigation is aimed (in most countries) at preventing future accidents rather than blaming someone, a significant difference to the analysis of road accidents. The relative safety of the two modes of transport may suggest which is the more effective model.

I'm one of those people who like to see the devil in the detail for these things. As POD quite rightly pointed out, advances in trauma care have increased survival rates markedly. This kind of influence was demonstrated in wars as Korea and Vietnam saw the advent of medevac choppers and significant improvements in mortality rates.

The improved passive safety measures in vehicles and improved vehicle design has also lessened injury numbers and severity in crashes.

So, I'd like to see data that draws out the numbers of collisions per registered vehicle numbers; mortality and injury rates as a function of the number of collisions and then factor in on top of all that the distances that we drive.

I think some of this information is available from the bureau of statistics. The key figures are probably accidents per kilometre (no good handle on this seeing we do not have to log and report every kilometre driven, or minor accidents, - per registered vehicle is a very approximate substitute, but takes no notice of changes in vehicle use due, for example to people avoiding car use due to increased petrol prices, but is probably the best we have), and deaths per accident, probably fairly accurate.

The end result would be something along the lines that for every km that people drive the incidence of death or injury on the road is 'x' compared to 'y' from 'w' number of years ago.

In my view the major change is in road conditions and in driver attitudes, rather than improvements in vehicle safety - and this result will not distinguish the two effects.

That'd give us some rather interesting figures and a true measure of the relative risk. The number of factors that contribute to that relative risk are many and varied.

Probably the best data, albeit incomplete, is the information held by insurance companies on claims. MUARC has done some work on these, but much more could be done.

John