The biggest lie of all

"A third of accidents are caused by speed"

The road safety industry have long asserted that speed causes a third of accidents, and this has become a fundamental plank of their road safety thinking, such as it is.

However, they admit that proper research into accident causation has never been carried out. [PACTS 1997]

The Transport Research Laboratory was commissioned to investigate a new type of form for police officers to report on road traffic accidents they attend. This form was designed to produce more accurate data on causal factors.

The results of this investigation, published in report TRL323, showed that excess speed was a factor (but not necessarily the only factor) in 7.3% of accidents.

Of course, this small problem did not divert the DLTR, who were by this time politically welded to the great 'one third' lie.

They got around their little problem by defining all sorts of other accident causes as "speed related" until they managed to get them to add up to a third.

Here the ABD exposes this and demonstrates the complete bankruptcy of thought prevalent in the road safety industry today.

Below is the table from TRL323 report (Page 9, Table 2) upon which the 'one third' lie is based.

The accident causes highlighted in green are those which the government claims are 'speed related'. Adding these up gives a total of 30%, which they then conveniently round up to 'one third'.

On the right are our comments on each of these items.

Accident Cause	Definite factors		ABD comments
	Qtt	%
Failure to judge other persons path or speed	623	10.7%	It is utter nonsense to class this as a 'speed related accident'. The situation here is one person failing to judge the path or speed of a second vehicle — which is not to say that the second vehicle is travelling at an inappropriate or illegal speed. It is purely a failure to observe correctly on the part of the first party.
Behaviour - careless/thoughtless/reckless	513	8.8%
Inattention	465	8.0%
Looked but did not see	436	7.5%
Excessive speed	424	7.3%	This is the only cause that is genuinely to do with speed. Note the percentage of 7.3%, hardly one third is it? Nor it is even the most significant cause of accidents, it comes fifth. We guess that telling the public that speed is responsible for only one thirteenth of accidents just didn't suit their purpose, so they dropped a '1' and made it one third instead.
Lack of judgment of own path	369	6.3%
Failed to look	365	6.2%
Following too close	238	4.1%	Again absolutely nothing to do with speed, you can drive too close to the vehicle in front at 1mph!
Impairment — alcohol	222	3.8%
Slippery road	175	3.0%	Now they are really getting silly. Imagine a truck spills diesel onto a 30mph road. You are driving along this road at 30mph and skid on the diesel patch resulting in an accident, and they claim this is a speed related accident? Twaddle, absolute twaddle.
Inexperience of driving	163	2.8%
Behaviour — in a hurry	157	2.7%	Being in a hurry does not mean travelling at excessive speed, it could include not waiting patiently at junctions, roundabouts or pedestrian crossings; not giving way to other traffic. If the vehicle was travelling at excessive speed the accident cause would be classed under 'Excessive Speed'.
Site details — bend / winding road	131	2.2%
Surroundings — stationary or parked vehicle	112	1.9%
Crossed from behind parked vehicle, etc	105	1.8%
Surroundings — bend / winding road	104	1.8%
Behaviour — panic	91	1.6%
Aggressive driving	80	1.4%	Again, this is not speed related, you can be aggressive at 5mph in a supermarket car park!
Behaviour — nervous / uncertain	69	1.2%
Other — (personal)	64	1.1%
Impairment — illness	58	1.0%
Distraction — physical outside vehicle	57	1.0%
Surroundings — buildings, fences, vegetation	56	1.0%
Failed to see pedestrian or vehicle in blindspot	56	1.0%
View — glare from the sun	55	0.9%
Impairment — fatigue	48	0.8%
Weather (eg mist or sleet)	45	0.8%	Perhaps the most ridiculous of all. This means that the accident was caused by the weather not speed, i.e. the vehicle was travelling at a perfectly reasonable speed but encountered some unexpected problem such as flooding on the roadway, or black ice. Again, if the vehicle at been travelling at excessive speed for the conditions it would have been classed under 'Excessive Speed' above.
Distraction — physical in/on vehicle	45	0.8%
Site details — narrow road	41	0.7%
Distraction — stress / emotional state of mind	39	0.7%
Inexperience of vehicle	37	0.6%
Surroundings — moving vehicle	31	0.5%
Animal out of control	29	0.5%
Site details — steep hill	28	0.5%
Other vehicle defects	26	0.4%
Tyres — deflation before impact	26	0.4%
Tyres — worn / insufficient tread	26	0.4%
Other (Local conditions)	24	0.4%	The inclusion of 'other' is an indication of the extent of the government's addiction to speed. They are so convinced that speed is the be-all and end-all of accident causation that if they can't attribute an accident to anything else, they conclude it must be speed related.
Site details — poor road surface	23	0.4%
Site details — roadworks	23	0.4%
Interaction or competition with other road users	23	0.4%
Defective brakes	22	0.4%
Site details — inadequate signing	17	0.3%
Impairment — drugs	17	0.3%
Ignored lights at crossing	15	0.3%
Person hit wore dark or inconspicuous clothing	15	0.3%
Disability	14	0.2%
Site details — poor / no street lighting	14	0.2%
Tyres — wrong pressure	9	0.2%
View — windows obscured	6	0.1%
High winds	6	0.1%
Defective lights or signals	5	0.1%
Earlier accident	4	0.1%
View — glare from headlights	1	0.0%
Number of factors reported	5847	100%

 
The Truth

Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865

So they can:

• justify wasting public money on speed cameras
• justify extorting millions of pounds every year from perfectly safe drivers
• force drivers to travel at increasingly lethargic speeds so that one of the main benefits of cars over public transport is taken away
• literally force drivers onto public transport by taking away their driving licences

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