Many years ago, somebody told me that the road toll over the Christmas/New Year period is really not much worse than for any other two week period of the year.
It was an annoying scrap of information that has stuck with me, and bugged me, because I’ve never been sure if it’s true or not. Then, with all the Christmas road warnings, the breathless reporting of the first Christmas fatality, the grieving families, the stern editorials … I begin to forget...
But today, I was thinking about it. I read that Victoria’s C/NY road toll was a ‘sickening’ 17, two more than last year’. [Elsewhere I read that last year’s toll was 16. This may be due to a discrepancy in reporting procedures between state and national.]
Anyway, I decided to do the maths.
Let’s say 16 people died in the C/NY period of 2006/7, a period of 14 days. The year before it was 12.
The average for ANY two weeks of 2006 was 12.88 [and would be similar for any of the last few years]. So, in the last two periods it has been 3 and 2 deaths above average. In 2005/6 it was 1 below.
Put another way – the daily average of road fatalities is 0.92. During the 2006/7 holiday period it was 1.1. 2005/6 = 0.86 2007/8 = 1.21
I am no statistician, but you could hardly call this a horrifying spike.
Yet still we hear of ‘the road carnage that usually takes place over the Christmas holiday’, ‘the festive-season toll count’, the ‘appalling statistics’. That we have 'no new weapons to fight the Christmas road carnage’.
And, if there is more traffic on the road during this period, as one constantly hears, would this not bring the numbers even closer to average? [Personally, I think there’s less traffic, but that’s just my experience.]
Why do the authorities campaign so heavily and the media follow along so enthusiastically? Have they forgotten that it’s not too much different from any other period? Did they ever know?
Could there be a reason that is independent of the figures?
Perhaps it lies in the historical toll for the period?
Or with a media desperate for stories in a slow period? Accidents do form a large part of holiday news bulletins. There’s good copy in a suffering family on Christmas day …
Perhaps the powers that be believe it is a time for meditating on road safety so instead of press releases and sober awareness campaigns, they embark upon a massive nationwide hoax…
Whatever the reason, I’ll trust it is for the public good - but I’ll bet you the man in the streets believes the toll to be a lot higher than it in fact is. And an act of public deception by authorities is never a good thing. Especially if it is invoking of fear …
It still frustrates me. Any ideas?
