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Eliminating serious injury and death from road transport : a crisis of complacency
\"The book explodes the myths that currently drive society's view of traffic safety and limit progress in reducing death and serious injury. It presents current scientific knowledge in a non-technical way and draws parallels with other areas of public safety and public health. It uses examples from the media and from public policy debates to paint a clear picture of a flawed public policy approach and offers preventive medicine principles to take the field forward\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Eliminating Serious Injury and Death from Road Transport
The book explodes the myths that currently drive society's view of traffic safety and limit progress in reducing death and serious injury. It presents current scientific knowledge in a non-technical way and draws parallels with other areas of public safety and public health.
eBook
Approaching Traffic Safety as Preventive Medicine
In Western society, the major public health challenges of the twenty-first century will
be dominated by lifestyle-related threats: obesity, abuse of alcohol and drugs, and
trauma resulting from the way we use the roads.52,140 Compounding this there is a
growing culture of immediacy that pervades all aspects of our lives; everything has to
be fast, now, and personally gratifying-interpersonal communication (cell phones,
social media), modes of doing business (Internet marketing, online sales), IT processing speeds, minimum personal journey times, and so on.141 Reconciling the demands
for immediacy with safe road use and resolving the disconnect between the perception
that driving behaviour is a matter of personal choice and the reality of interdependent
social behaviour both require fundamental culture change at the whole-of-society
level. How we might set about achieving such lasting change is the theme of this book.
Book Chapter
The Way We View Safety Is a Big Part of the Problem
The 2009 World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Status Report on Road Safety
estimated that more than 1.2 million people die each year on the world’s roads, and
that between 20 and 50 million suffer nonfatal injuries.17 It also estimated that
more than 90% of the world’s fatalities resulting from road crashes occur in lowincome and middle-income countries, which have only 48% of the world’s registered
motor vehicles. Of immense concern is the fact that these countries are now rapidly
motorising and the death and disabling injury totals will increase dramatically over
the next couple of decades unless radical change occurs.
Book Chapter
The Car in Society
As we pointed out in Chapter 1, the car is unquestionably central to the lifestyle
of most people in modern Western societies, and the nature of the personal mobility
it provides is likely to remain one of mankind’s most prized assets for as much of the
twenty-first century as we can reasonably foresee.50,51Dorling, in his Westminster oration on traffic safety in 2010, went so far as to
say: “We prioritise what is good for the motor industry over what is good for human
beings. We do this because the industry has become a force in its own right.”52 Society
has such an affinity with cars that Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner
claimed: “The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his
child nor his country nor even his bank-account first.”53 Others have described our
car dependency as a Faustian bargain.51
Book Chapter
Brief History of How and Why Science Takes a Back Seat
We should not forget that personal mobility through motorised transport has a relatively short history, albeit a history of rapid evolution. The horse and carriage and
the bicycle began to give way to the motorcycle and the motorcar barely 100 years
ago. The initial response was an immediate focus on infrastructure provision; more
and better roads were needed. As motorised traffic volumes increased, an additional
focus was needed on traffic management, including legislation and regulation. For
example, the world’s first traffic light was only switched on in 1914 (in Cleveland,
Ohio),25 while the first traffic act in France appeared in 1921 and the first in China
not until 1955.97Education about road rules and safe driving quickly became the principal tool
within governments’ crash prevention strategies based upon the (now quaint) belief
that if drivers understood what was good, safe practice, they would always apply it!
It was the birth of the moral approach, which has proven remarkably, and tragically,
resilient. As Jennifer Clark wrote:While enforcement was a supplementary strategy, it was with a “soft glove”
because the police saw traffic enforcement as secondary to the enforcement of “real
crime.”99 The fledgling profession of traffic engineering had no choice but to become
the interpreters of human behaviour in traffic, sadly without any training in behavioural science. Traffic engineers were undoubtedly happy to be supported by road
safety councils comprising eminent and concerned citizens who led the (largely)
educational efforts.
Book Chapter
Serious Crashes Have Impacts Way Beyond Those Injured
We have, in the preceding chapters, painted a picture of where we are, how we got
there, and where we might aim to go. As a motivator for action, we put a human face
on serious injury in Chapter 2. Before turning to how we might start the new journey,
we add a further dimension to the human face of trauma.
Book Chapter
Confronting Complacency
In Chapter 1, we stated: “It is impossible to escape the conclusion that we have the
level of trauma that we, as motorised societies, are comfortable with” and that we
were going to try to “understand why complacency rules.”
Book Chapter
Eliminating Serious Injury and Death from Road Transport Is Not a Pipe Dream
Every one of us uses the roads every day, most of us several times a day. We walk,
cycle, and drive as part of our daily lives; this is how we “get around” in order to
do all the things we want to do. Roads, and the vehicles they service, are also the
dominant means by which the vast majority of the goods we consume, and almost
all of the services we use, move from farm, port, factory, or business to warehouse,
tradesman’s premise, service centre, or retail outlet to our homes. Road use is such
a fundamental part of our lives that we take it for granted. A modern, efficient road
and road transport system is unquestionably critical to our standard of living. Not
surprisingly, though, given the staggering volume of road use and the ever-present
opportunity for something to go wrong, crashes are also commonplace daily events.
Book Chapter
Evolution of Safe System Thinking
Very few of us stop to consider the basic characteristics of our road transport system.
When we visit low-income countries we note with a wry smile that motorcycle helmet and seat belt use are rare, that walking on the road is common, and that when
sidewalks do exist, they tend be filled with traders and their goods. These are things
we, in motorised societies, no longer tolerate, but we do tolerate, unquestioningly,
seriously unsafe designs, even though they are within our understanding and in front
of our eyes every day. We tolerate and blithely accept them because we have grown
up with them and we believe that we are totally in control of our own destiny on the
roads, and that serious crashes only happen to unskilled or reckless others.
Book Chapter