I'm still trying to wrap my head around the stats on road collisions that are in the police press release posted earlier for crimes, and after a couple of threads on the BIAW forums, now recognize that despite the initially apparent good news about the decrease in reported collisions, there's still a lot of vague elements to the statistics.
First and foremost, traffic collisions are all lumped together, and it's only road fatalities, which we of course can gather easily through the mass media, that we have other data to analyse. The fatality rate, of course, has not dropped at all over the past few years.
We don't know the trend with regards to serious road injuries, or the amount of collisions attributed to speeding, drunk driving or bad judgement (such as overtaking, cell phone use, etc.)
The raw numbers can be used to justify the current policy of using primarily speed traps and monthly blitzes for seatbelts and tint in monitoring road use and booking those who speed on straight roads, so maybe it's fair not to just take the numbers at face value but continue to question why or will there be further efforts taken such as using mobile or stationery cameras, inplementing more speed bumps, changing some of the pedestrian crossing locations or monitoring red light runners.
1 comment:
I would not place any reliance on statistics relating to traffic collisions being released. I was involved in a bumper bashing recently as a result of a driver not stopping at a stop street. When I went to report it to the police they refused to take a statement or record the incident. I questioned them regarding the effect on the accuracy of the statistics that they release, to which the officers laughed off and became offensive. I would not be surprised if this has happened to other drivers.
You don't need to look at the statistics to realize that Bermuda's roads are a death trap. Next time you are out driving count how many cars that overtake you at speeds in excess of the speed limit or don't stop at marked intersections. I am only on the road for about 20 minutes each day and I count at least 10 traffic violations each and every day which I am witness to. In the past 6 months I have only seen traffic officers about a dozen times. Not the kind of visibility that is going to deter errant drivers.
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