EU Wants to control how you drive

ashenfie

Fair enough I stand corrected. Choice is limited to Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Tesco, Waitrose, Iceland and just eat or Uber eat then

Over by there

Many cars already have speed limiters and they are very simple. The ECU of your car already knows the gear you have selected and the RPM. Simply limit RPM in higher gears. Simples.

My concern is that all these devices will make for more accidents not less. The less there is to control the less the driver concentrates on what they are doing. So too busy chatting or looking out the window to notice the kid running out in front.

Also wasting money on not very smart motorways/speed limiter legislation and the like rather than improving town infrastructure annoys me. It totally systemic too as they budget system prevent many towns roads becoming safer the play we need to be safer.

Ruperts slippers

2017 are the latest stats I think.
Contributory factors for reported road accidents (RAS50)
I have a bad habit looking them up every time someone says speed is at the biggest killer such as the EU just have (not applicable to the UK, other countries maybe). You can download the figures, these are captured by the police at accidents. Excel opens the info.

And interesting stat in there is too fast for the conditions, can they control that? And another interesting one is for vehicles that have limiters, HGV's etc. Very low. You can see where some of the thinking may be influenced.

Pacifico

Driver error or reaction is still the largest cause of accidents. We do have a very diverse selection of the population on our roads and despite numerous driver aids certain members of the populous do seem to have great difficulty in making decisions. I live semi-rural, I have to say the plethora of 4x4, range rover drivers do seem to create quite a spectacle even manoeuvring their vehicles on both the narrow roads and even the local Co-op.
That is of course anecdotal, I think driver awareness and training needs to be highlighted as room for improvement. The stats for cyclists, horse riders are appalling, who on earth feels entitled to drive so badly that running into another completely unprotected vulnerable road is user is ever acceptable. They should be banned permanently.

Rasczak

The easiest thing to do to promote road safety would be to ban BMW drivers. They get behind that propeller badge and think they are Erich Hartmann...

ashenfie

That's actually quite a good idea.

nabby

The problem with stats is
That we only have stats for what is easy to measure. We don’t really see any aceidents caused by eying up a pritty lady or simply working out the answers to a question.

Total agree about miss jobs doing weather conditions as be caused , but not always the case.

Over by there

You missed out these bit for some reason:

In 2013, rural roads carried the majority of car traffic (42 per cent) followed by urban roads (32 per cent) and motorways (20 per cent). Fatalities on rural roads increased by 3 per cent to 1,070 in 2013, however this figure is still around 8 per cent lower than 2011 total.

In contrast, fatalities on urban roads decreased by 13 per cent from 627 deaths in 2012 to 543 deaths in 2013, reversing the 2011 increase.

Accidents that occur on rural roads are more likely to be of a fatal nature in comparison with those on urban roads. This is because of the difference in the average speed on different roads.

Rural roads have a much higher average speed than urban roads. Rural roads are often much more sinuous and narrow in nature with blind bends, dips and other distractions. Accidents at lower speeds on urban roads are less likely to result in serious injuries or fatalities.

This is borne out by the fact that the fatality rate for road deaths is higher on rural roads than on urban roads (7.3 fatalities per billion vehicle miles compared to 2.6 on urban roads), despite the greater number of vehicle interactions on urban roads.
Also, the table at the end of the report you linked to and quoted from shows the following contributory factors reported in accidents:

Careless, reckless or in a hurry - 20%
Exceeding speed limit - 16%
Travelling too fast for conditions - 13%

I'd lump those three together as being interlinked. They make up 49% of all accidents in terms of reported contributory factors.

Even some of the other factors will no doubt involve to some extent the speed of the vehicle involved.  After all, if I'm not paying attention properly at 15 mile per hour then I'll more likely not kill someone than kill them.  The same thing at 35mph and I'll more likely kill them than not.

Ruperts slippers

There is a cover note on the contributory factors data sheet and at the bottom of main page to the collection. It will not be the best ever, but I assume best possible. Some accidents I would not even want to be near and police have to deal with some awful things and are human just like us.
Road accidents and safety statistics

STATS19 is the form used for the accident, and it is passed to the EU I think.

Back in day when protestors were citing speed as the major killer, the data had to be obtained by freedom if information if memory serves. That showed the speed kills claims to be very inaccurate and the reporting now is a lot more detailed, and as you can see, on the web free of charge. Of course speed is a killer but in concentrating on that one word they were missing all the pulling out of junctions or distracted etc. that resulted in more deaths.

Eying up passers by would come under distraction I would think if reported.

Goooner

We could go back to driving 4mph and someone walking in front waving a flag, that should cut a few accidents