Obtaining detailed accident reports.

tomstickland

I'm frustrated by the never-ending reports in the local paper saying "another accident has occured on this road, something must be done, we need more limits, we need more cameras" and then looking at the pictures and thinking "what exactly happened?".
In general, a frustration at the lack of detailed information. There's never any follow up reports to say "one vehicle overtook on a blind bend" or "it was cuased by a vehicle pulling out and not seeing a motorbike" or whatever.

So I quite fancy doing some detailed work. Do you think it's possible to obtain detailed reports of all the accidents on a road for n years?

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

The police categorise accidents, and those statistics are AFAIK submitted to the Department of Transport.

A freedom of information request to the local scamera 'safety' pratnership should reveal the statistics behind camera placement but often they are loathe to give out the information as it belies their arguments.

You should be aware that only about 2% of all KSI incidents on the road are caused by vehicles exceeding the speed limit.

moonrakerz

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers! wrote: »

You should be aware that only about 2% of all KSI incidents on the road are caused by vehicles exceeding the speed limit.

That is a very good and accurate point you have raised there.

It annoys me intensely when I see senior police officers appearing on television trying to justify speed cameras and the like and they say "30% of road accidents are caused by excessive speed."
What they should be saying is that "2% of road accidents are caused by vehicles driving faster than the posted speed limit" - but of course that doesn't support their argument.
Driving at 20 mph in thick fog, when you should be doing 10mph is "excessive speed", but all the speed cameras in the world won't detect that !

tomstickland

Well, it's interesting that you say that. There's a 2 mile single carriageway link on the main road from Swindon to Gloucester and there's been a fair few accidents there over the years. It doesn't help that there's a pub at the bottom of a steep hill. The paper reported that "11 mobile camera sites have been identified to help improve safety". I think that really means 10 sites where people doing 80 on the motorway equivalent dual carriageway can be easily caught and one location that is the real danger point.

The sad thing is that even the bit past the pub shouldn't be dangerous - it just requires some basic observation and appreciation of possible risks..

Anyway, every time an accident happens ( the latest one was a head on, so I think a badly thought out overtake was done, though not much data to go on) a load of plebs call for lower limits and more cameras. These must be the people the "safety=speed and nothing else" message is intended for.