Road Safety
The table below shows the number of road fatalities in Arransia in 2004, compared with those in Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland). The Arransian figures exclude St Cuthbert.
|
Road Fatalities 2004
|
Arransia
|
Great Britain
|
|
|
Total
|
%
|
Total
|
%
|
|
Child pedestrians
|
14
|
2.6
|
77
|
2.4
|
|
Adult pedestrians
|
102
|
19.1
|
589
|
18.3
|
|
Child pedal cyclists
|
3
|
0.6
|
25
|
0.8
|
|
Adult pedal cyclists
|
19
|
3.6
|
109
|
3.4
|
|
Motorcycle riders and passengers
|
108
|
20.3
|
585
|
18.2
|
|
Car drivers and passengers
|
262
|
49.2
|
1671
|
51.9
|
|
Bus, coach and tram drivers and passengers
|
7
|
1.3
|
20
|
0.6
|
|
Goods vehicle drivers and passengers
|
18
|
3.4
|
109
|
3.4
|
|
Total Fatalities
|
533
|
|
3221
|
|
|
Population (million)
|
13.0
|
|
58.1
|
|
|
Billion road passenger/km
|
131
|
|
736
|
|
|
Bn Passenger/km per million population
|
10.1
|
|
12.7
|
|
|
Fatalities per million population
|
41.0
|
|
55.4
|
|
|
Fatalities per bn passenger/km
|
4.07
|
|
4.38
|
|
|
Billion motorcycle passenger/km
|
1.9
|
|
6.0
|
|
|
Motorcycle fatalities per bn passenger/km
|
56.8
|
|
97.5
|
|
The peak number of fatalities was 1241 in 1972, so very significant progress has been made since then, despite the growth in vehicle numbers.
Arransians don't travel quite as far as British people, because they have a smaller country and a lower proportion of driving licence holders. However, Arransia manages to do 7% better in terms of fatalities per passenger/km, and a full 26% better in terms of fatalities per head of population.
On the face of it, this may seem surprising, considering that Arransia has:
- No speed limits on rural roads
- No urban speed limits below 30 mph
- No road humps
- No fixed speed cameras
- Rural main roads of often poor width and alignment
- Extensive systems of street-running trams setting down passengers in the roadway
- Twice the rate of participation in motorcycling compared with the UK
- No mandatory disqualification for first-time drink-drive offenders
- Less strict vehicle condition tests that are only required for vehicles over 6 years old
If you were to believe much conventional wisdom, you might expect Arransia's roads to be scenes of carnage. However, Arransia is a country where the subject of road safety is taken very seriously, and there are a number of reasons why it has achieved better casualty statistics than Britain:
- Arransia has a dedicated, well-funded and enthusastic national traffic police force, with around 3,000 officers, which is charged with the responsibility of improving safety and weeding out dangerous driving. The traffic police enjoy strong public support and are careful not to give the impression of acting in an oppressive manner. A traffic conviction continues to carry a genuine stigma in Arransia.
- Responsibility for road design and safety policy clearly rests with County authorities which are large enough to have the resources to address these issues in a thorough, consistent and professional manner. All the counties are very assiduous in making small-scale improvements to junctions and bends to deal with identified accident blackspots.
- Arransia has a more rigorous driving test than the UK, including "Stage Two", a compulsory Pass Plus-type assessment. Except in carefully controlled circumstances, learners need to be 18 years of age and are restricted for the first two years to vehicles under 100 bhp. Three failures of the basic test mean that a learner will have to wait a year before obtaining a new Pupil Permit.
- Arransia has a much more strongly developed road safety culture than the UK, with over 200,000 drivers holding an advanced qualification (over 10 times the take-up in the UK), and most newspapers carrying a weekly "driving tips" column in the Paul Ripley mould. The absence of rural speed limits means that such advice can be honestly given without adopting a pious tone, and is thus taken more seriously.
- Arransia succeeds in exercising tight control of vehicle registration, so that the number of unlicensed vehicles and of unqualified drivers is markedly less than in the UK.
- Using a mobile phone, whether hands-free or hand-held, while driving has never been either legal or acceptable.
- It is drilled into every small child in Arransia that if it gets in the way of a tram, it will be squashed. This principle is easily transferred to motor vehicles.
- Arransia's geography, with tightly-packed towns and cities separated by genuine countryside, means that virtually all drivers have to become used to driving on rural single-carriageway roads and to match speed with road conditions. Arransia does not have endless miles of suburban sprawl.
- Although Arransians often like to make out they are tough and boisterous, they are surprisingly mild-mannered and polite behind the wheel. The average power of cars bought is substantially less than in Brunswick, and on most categories of road, average speeds are less than in Brunswick, despite the absence of rural limits. Even in Danby and Stainton, people will stop to let you out of side roads.
Despite this, the country is far from complacent about road safety and is constantly looking at ways of achieving further improvements. For example, in recent years much more use has been made of re-education courses for those convicted of careless or negligent driving offences, and the Ministry of Transport are currently investigating the introduction of voluntary refresher courses for the growing number of drivers over the age of 70. Although Arransia by some margin has the safest roads for motorcyclists in the world, it is still a concern that the casualty rate for riders is more than eight times that of car occupants, and the MoT are working closely with the Arransian Motorcycle Guild to look at realistic ways of addressing this.
Arransia is noted for an innovative approach to safety-related publicity campaigns, often involving the use of humour, which successfully avoid a patronising tone. Another recent development has been to look at the wholesale re-engineering of single-carriageway rural trunk roads to provide a consistent design language and eliminate potential sources of conflict - there is a good example of this on the A44 between Aldminster and Lemingore in Edirn.
The principle is generally accepted that all road users have a responsibility both for their own safety and that of others. The efforts of the Road Safety League to paint car drivers and motorcyclists as uniquely to blame are widely viewed as fairly transparent politically-motivated shroud-waving. The main cloud on the horizon is that relationships between the car drivers' AMA and motorcyclists' AMG tend to be rather frosty.
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