British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli might have been right in the 19th century when he said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
More than a century on, however, the science of gathering statistics and our understanding of probability should put paid to Disraeli’s adage. The gathering of accurate statistics in modern times has been one of the greatest catalysts to improving people’s lives.
Australia is blessed with an independent body to gather statistics, the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We also have dozens of other agencies that gather them with similar objectivity and accuracy, such as traffic authorities and health and welfare agencies.
When you add media coverage and politicians who are accountable to the electorate you can get a great force for change for the good – if the public is engaged enough.
And so it was with this week’s debate on P-Plate drivers. Sad as the deaths have been, the response has been marked by a fairly robust debate and promise of legislative action in NSW.
This debate has not been merely a knee jerk reaction to a couple of one-off crashes. It has been under-pinned by statistics, the critical one being the NSW road toll for 2006. The toll went down slightly, but the number of P-Plate-related deaths went up by 30 per cent, from 73 to 94. In short, experienced drivers are modifying their behaviour but P-Platers are not.
In the past 30 years, Australia has cut its road toll substantially. The raw toll has been halved to around 1700 a year. Allowing for more people and cars, it has been cut by two thirds – from 30 per 100,000 people per year to just under nine or from 3.5 deaths per 100 million kilometres travelled to just under one.
There has been no simple, single solution. Rather a combination of stricter enforcement, education, and better cars and roads.
Every step on the path of stricter enforcement, however, has had vociferous opposition: seat belts, radar, speed and red-light cameras and Breathalyzers. But the opposition has been overcome and all have contributed to the saving of perhaps 30,000 lives and preventing 300,000 injuries over the past 30 years (about equivalent to Australian casualties in World War II).
Now passenger and night-driving restrictions for P-Plate drivers are being opposed.
Unlike the “war on terror” this is a war worth losing some liberty over.
Sure, it may have been better to do it a slightly different way and for NSW to wait for an Australia-wide approach, but the statistics and the personal suffering and economic cost they represent demand thoughtful, effective action.
Brain-scanning research now shows that the brain does not mature until the age of 25. When teenagers are put under pressure or distracted their judgment goes and their behaviour goes bad. They cannot cope. Extra passengers and night conditions add to distraction and pressure.
Curfews and passenger limits for young drivers have been effective in other jurisdictions.
The brain research goes some way to explaining general injury statistics that about a quarter of people under 25 have suffered some sort of injury in the past four weeks and the rate steadily drops to around 10 per cent at age 70. Young people take too many risks. The ageing of the population is not all bad.
It may be that the carrot rather than the stick would have been better. Rather than impose new restrictions on 17-year-olds, the licence age could have been cut to 16 with the first year for daytime, solo driving.
In any event, the evidence is in that it is foolish to give someone a licence first up that enables them to carry passengers at night.
We should borrow from air-traffic regulations. New pilots cannot hop into a jumbo jet at night. Pilots start with an instructor, just like car drivers. Then they get a solo licence for day flying only in good weather in a small plane. Then they get a passenger licence and then a night licence. Only after considerable experience are they allowed to flight at night with passengers in a powerful aircraft in bad weather.
About 50 people a year die in aircraft crashes in Australia. It is a much lower toll per kilometre travelled in a much more inherently risky activity.
The air-transport industry aims for a zero death rate. So does the mining industry. They achieve low death and injury rates through regulation and enforcement. They licence people to do more things gradually as they get experience and training.
The ACT Government has dismissed the NSW proposals as knee-jerk and unfair. True, they might discourage the “designated driver” practice. They might inconvenience 17-year-olds who work or study at night when public transport is hopeless. But that has to be balanced against the unfairness to the people who P-Platers maim and kill.
I would be happy to meet the 17-year-olds half way: a licence at 16 and a half for six months solo daytime driving, followed by six months with no passengers at night. But however we do it we should have a graduated licensing scheme.
The ACT Government says we had no P-Plate-related deaths in the ACT in 2006 so there is no need to act. That argument fails. The ACT’s population is too small for one year to be statistically significant. Further, the ACT might have the lowest road toll per head of population in Australia (by a long way), but NRMA research shows we cause a lot of carnage on interstate roads.
Alas, we do not know what interstate damage our P-Plate drivers do compared to other drivers. We should find out before dismissing the NSW proposals. It comes back to statistics.
The gathering of road trauma statistics has under-pinned ultimate public acceptance of enforcement measures over the past 30 years, but there is still a long way to go to curb risky behaviour.
In less than a decade it is likely that handing a 17-year-old a licence to drive with passengers at night is as silly as allowing a novice to drive a 10-tonne truck.