Even now, 33 years later, members of my family still feel the effects.
We were travelling home from school from Albury to Beechworth. My
mother usually drove, but she allowed an 18-year-old lad who
occasionally travelled with us to drive.
It was a Y intersection. Nowadays it is laced with give-way signs and
traffic islands. Then it was unmarked.
Does the driver coming down the left-hand prong of the Y into the stem
have to give way to someone coming up the stem into the right-hand
prong?
The other driver, in his 70s, died later from his injuries.
Our car was a Holden with only lap seat-belts in the front. None in the
back. The dashboard was metal. My bother’s head hit it. My mother’s
knee smashed against it. The steering column popped forward and
smashed the arm of the lad who was driving.
The Victorian Ambulance Service went south to Beechworth and then to
Wangaratta, not north across the border to Albury.
So many factors. Age, youth, bad roads, bad cars, bureaucracy. Such
ghastly destruction, but so commonplace that it rates so little attention.
Never in the field of human endeavour has so much destruction been
caused to so many by such a small contraption. Seriously. More death in
Australia than in both wars.
This week the Federal Office of Road Safety has been conducting a
national road safety summit. There is a lot of suffering and money to be
saved with a greater understanding of why we crash cars.
The summit was told of a distressing increase in the percentage of women
drivers in accidents in the city.
These statistics have also caused road-toll experts to again express the
view that the road toll has to be attacked on many fronts: driver behaviour,
road design, car design etc etc.
I used to subscribe to that view, but I now think there is a single
explanation to the road toll and that attempts to reduce it to be directed to
that explanation.
It comes down to human behaviour. Humans seek optimum outcomes.
They want to get somewhere as quickly as possible within a finite
framework of risk. They will not travel at 30km/h to utterly guarantee a
safe arrival. They will cop what they think is the fairly minimal extra risk to
travel at 60km/h to get there in half the time.
The fixed factor is the amount of risk people are willing to take. It is
measured subjectively. People will take what they think is an acceptable
level of risk to get the benefit of earlier arrival. For example, someone will
drive at 35km/h on a dirt road to work every day for 10 years. When the
road gets sealed they travel at 80km/h so they can get to work more
quickly with what they think is exactly the same level of risk. They will not
travel at 35km/h on the new paved road to reduce the risk.
As roads and car safety improve, people will travel exactly that much
faster to bring them up to what they think is the same level of risk and
translate all the improvement in road and car safety to the benefit of
arriving sooner.
Bear in mind it is “”what they think” is the same level of risk. Often what
they think is wrong. They might increase their speed too much in the safer
car or on the safer road, and the road toll goes up. They might increase
their speed too little so the accident rate goes down. Nonetheless, they
change their behaviour when conditions change in a way that they (ital)
think (ital) their risk remains the same. The variable is always arrival time.
Usually, drivers underestimate the safety value of better conditions, at least
initially. Ultimately, though they settle to retaining the earlier risk value.
So it is a myth that cars with extra safety factors like anti-lock brakes, air-
bags, seat-belts and the like will of themselves lower the road toll. All it
does is give drivers a greater sense of security so they can drive faster. To
take an extreme opposite example, if I put a sharp metal spike a centimetre
from a driver’s forehead, that driver will drive very cautiously indeed.
So why have we been successful in reducing the road toll over the past 25
years. The road safety people and police will tell you it is because we have
introduced “”road-safety” measures: seat belts, amphometers, random
breath-testing, speed cameras and red-light cameras.
The introduction of these measures has reduced the toll, no doubt, but the
road-safety people and the police jump to the correct conclusion. They
jump over a very constant element in human behaviour: the amount of risk
we are willing to accept to get an outcome. We want to get to a place as
quickly and cheaply as possible. In the 1960s we thought we better not
drive at 100 miles and hour because we will expose ourselves to a risk of
death or injury which is unacceptable against the marginal been fit of
getting somewhere a little quicker. So we drive at 60 miles an hour.
In the 1990s we think we better not drive at 160km/h because we will
expose ourselves to the risk of death, injury and property damage (ital)
and (and) the risk of a heavy fine or licence loss by the extra police
measures on the road.
We have changed our behaviour because there are extra risk factors out
there. Cops with radar guns and Breathalyzers. So we reduce our speed
and the amount we drink and cop the extra inconvenience of arriving a
little bit later or paying for a taxi. But the amount of risk we are willing to
take stays finite.
Impatient youth of course will cop a higher level of risk for a tiny gain of
time than older people will. Older people with more experience and
knowledge have a better idea of the balance and know that the extra risk of
mangled bodies and metal is not worth a few minutes. People with more
experience also understand that risk is not linear, but exponential. You
may gain a flat extra minute for every 5m/h extra you travel, but the extra
risk of injury, death or damaged property for each extra 5km/m doubles.
Physics is like that. Stopping times extend exponentially with speed.
Drivers of public transport and their employers have a much greater
understanding of risk than most private drivers.
So the keys to reducing the road toll are twofold. First, we must increase
the risk attached to bad driving: higher fines and greater likelihood of being
caught. Secondly, we must increase the understanding of the nature of the
risk: that extra speed, orange lights, drunkenness will result in a greater
likelihood of physical and economic pain outstrips the small gain obtain
from getting there sooner.
Merely making cars and roads “”safer” will not help. People will inevitably
adjust their behaviour to translate all the gains into getting their sooner
rather than getting their will less exposure to death and injury, unless they
are educated or coerced into contrary behaviour.
And don’t give up hope. All the evidence suggests that people in nations
where cars have been around a long time are learning, while in developing
coutnries they are killing and maiming themselves at a rate we used to in
the 1960s.