Britians lowest road death toll ever

obi_waynne

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Britain has just published the lowest ever no of road deaths since 1926 (when records began) at a figure of 2,538. In 1966 the figure was around 7890 so there has been a lot of progress made.

This is all the more staggering since the number of cars on our roads have increased so dramatically to over 32,897,000 vehicles registered for use on UK roads including cars, vans, taxis, buses and trucks in 2006!

What do you think has been the biggest factor in cutting road deaths?
 
Airbags and other safety devices. Although with the increase in the number of cars on the road the more they are conjested so this may play a part in some areas.
 
I'm putting my money more on congestion than airbags.

I'd like to say it's because of heightened driver awareness, but really? Let's not forget pedestrians. They don't benefit from airbags, in fact the opposite may be true, as drivers then feel safer, but they do benefit from 5mph traffic jams. Difficult to get killed at that speed, especially with 'pedestrian-kind' NCAP measures scooping them up rather than mowing them down. It'd be interesting to see the split between car-occupant deaths and 'other road users'. You could argue (I'm not even going to go there) that to make the roads safer, we should ban seat belts, and fit all dashboards with a large spike facing the driver - now that would stop a few accidents.

Some road deaths are so easily avoided. For example, in London last year, 15 cyclists were killed, 9 of whom were killed by contact with an HGV, probably whilst it was turning left. To not become one of the 9, all a cyclist has to do is never get next to an artic that's signalling left.
 

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