On 30 June and 1 July Oxford Brookes University is holding a History of Road Safety Symposium (http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/conference/history_of_road_safety_symposium). History, as they say, is written by the victors. The concluding speaker is Rob Gifford, Executive Director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. The title of his presentation is “How parliament came to love seat …
Category Archive: seat belts
Jun
27
2011
Feb
08
2011
Two methods of transport-safety myth building
1. Simple assertion. An example can be found in the current issue of The Economist by the journal’s Science and Technology correspondent writing under the name of Babbage (http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/02/road_safety). Babbage notes that the US fatality rate has been “inching down over the past half century” and then proceeds to explain why: it is the result …
Dec
02
2010
Managing transport risks: what works?
I have been invited to contribute a chapter to a book called Risk Theory Handbook to be published by Springer. Publication is scheduled for a year from now, so there is still time to make changes/corrections/improvements. Comments are welcomed. Here is the abstract. Abstract What does a transport safety regulator have in common with a …
Nov
05
2009
Seat belts: another look at the data
I am grateful for a question posted today by Carsten Jasner in response to an earlier post of mine – Seat belts again. It has prompted another look at the data: “Very interesting! But when the number of car occupant deaths increases while the number of all road user deaths decreases – how can the …
Oct
16
2009
Final open letter to Executive Director of PACTS
(If experiencing problems with IE7, please try Firefox, Opera or Safari) To Robert Gifford Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety Dear Rob Failing a response, I propose to draw this one-sided correspondence to a close. I believe that I have established: a. that the claim that seat belts have saved 60000 lives …
Oct
06
2009
Third Open Letter to Executive Director of PACTS
To Robert Gifford Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety Dear Rob Thank you for sending me a paper claiming that seat belts have saved 57000 lives in the UK between 1983 and 2007. Is this the source of the 60000 claim posted on your website in 2008? I have discovered that the …
Sep
30
2009
Second open letter to Executive Director of PACTS
To Robert Gifford Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety Dear Rob I’m sorry but I must persist. The power and endurance of the myth that PACTS and RoSPA have built around the seat belt law takes a lot of deconstructing. So long as belief in the efficacy of the law persists it …
Sep
23
2009
Open letter to Executive Director of PACTS
To Robert Gifford Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety Dear Rob This claim made over a year ago is still on the PACTS website: “On the 31st January 2008, the 25th anniversary of the law change which made front seatbelt wearing compulsory was celebrated. PACTS itself was set up by Barry Sheerman …
Sep
22
2009
Seat belts – from the archive
Now in retirement and culling my files in the process of downsizing I came upon the following letter from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents dated 7 July 1981 shortly before Parliament was to vote on a seat belt law, and encouraging Parliament to vote for the law: “TO ALL MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT …
Sep
16
2009
Seat belts again
Yesterday when I showed Mayer Hillman the graphs in my last blog on this subject he complained that they displayed the statistics for all road user deaths and not the statistics for those affected by the seatbelt law, i.e. people in the front seats of cars. My excuse was that at the time I produced …
Subscribe
