A Road Crash is No Accident

ROAD SAFETY ARTICLE

I once did a piece titled, Road Crash Not Road Accident. The piece was not an original piece but was culled. The aim of that piece was to increase the vocabulary of motorists and align their views with global developments. Today, I wish to look at our road safety trend and compare them with similar trends in other clime. But before I dwell on my focus for today, please permit me to run part of that piece as it provides the introduction to our new focus. The piece will among others, show you how inconsistent some government across the world are in according priority to road safety, whether in terms of policy formulation, or even funding.

You will also read the opinion of concerned road safety professionals over the continued use of road accident in describing road crashes. You will be amazed to know that even individuals treat road safety as accident. The same is the case for corporate organisations that would rather budget billions to fight crime than worry about road safety. I do hope that you will find this rehash interesting. Meanwhile, do you know that in both low income and high income societies, less attention is paid to traffic enforcement even though over four times as many lives are lost through road crashes compared to crimes. This is in spite of the strategies by the United Nations through its Decade of Action for Road Safety meant to tilt global commitment in tackling the road pandemic.

Did you know we can actually make sustained progress in redressing road crashes through prioritising road safety challenges, especially as exemplified by the huge support the federal government has been giving to the Federal Road Safety Corps? Did you also know that if we must make progress in causing a drop in road mishap, we must focus on changing human behaviour? Did you know that the first step to changing human behaviour must be to stop thinking of road traffic crashes as accidents but to talk exclusively of crashes? As we gradually draw the curtain to exit 2021, we must reflect on the avoidable crashes that occurred since January. As the year snails, every motorist must ponder on his bad driving habits and determine to make a change for the better.

Please permit me to take you back to the issue of Road Crash Not Accident. In his photo documentary, When Lives Collide, involving Road Peace members, Paul Wenham Clarke explains why he used the term ‘incident’ rather that ‘accident’. Paul observed that observers and road users will not truly understand the difference between these words until the day comes when someone knocks at your door to give you devastating news of a loved one. An accident, he noted, is something that could not have been prevented; it is one of those things that no one is to blame. How many of the stories you will read in this book fall into this category?

Road Peace and road crash victims want everyone dealing with or reporting on road safety and collision issues, including the media, road safety and law enforcement processionals, not to use the term ‘accident’ when referring to road traffic crashes. Road Peace as a result updated its briefing sheet for the first UN Global Road Safety Week. It also responded to the multi-million-pound investigation, led by Sir John Stevens, into the road crash in which Diana, Princess of Wales was killed. This investigation concluded that it was simply an accident while, perversely, at the same time confirming the involvement of a driver excessively over both the drink drive and speed limits. It may not have been a premeditated assassination, but the crash involved criminal behaviour and was certainly no accident.

In his submission, Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine notes that the Oxford Dictionary defines an Accident as an event that is without apparent cause or that is unexpected. Its use in the context of child road deaths could not be more inappropriate. He further argued that more is known about when, where and why child pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions occur, and who will die as a result, than from almost any other disease in childhood. It would make more sense to talk of a case of accidental meningitis or accidental leukaemia.

The causes of many crashes are well known. We know that there is an increased risk of a collision when drink driving or speeding are involved. Yet despite two decades of enforcement and education, one in six UK fatal crashes still involves a drink driver and twice as many fatal crashes involves speeding. While speeding is on the decrease in the UK, half of all drivers admit to breaking the 30mph speed limit. Endemic, he further notes, is a more accurate description for speeding than is accidental. The story is the same in our clime where despite increasing speed related road crashes, there are road users who still brag or boast about being speed freaks.

Fatigue is believed to contribute to 10 per cent of all fatal crashes. Fatigue is a condition that comes on gradually and with clear warning signs, and cannot be considered unexpected. In 2001, the British Medical Journal banned the use of the word ‘accident’ to avoid the connotation of unpredictability, since ‘most injuries and their precipitating events are predictably and preventable events’. Fifteen years ago, leading epidemiologists described the belief that injuries are accidents as the last folklore subscribed to by rational men. This perhaps explains why Rita Taylor of the Road Peace Bristol Group, wonders why is it an ‘Accident’ when someone dies or is injured on our roads, arguing that someone actually took a decision to flout the laws. The laws flouted could be driving excessively above the approved speed limit or it could be driving and using the mobile phone despite its inherent risk. It could be driving impaired, among other infractions that are committed at will by road users.