Road safety TV commercial

[jefmcg]

In Victoria, Australia third party personal injury insurance is all through a Government insurer, so that organisation has a financial interest in improving road safety. Thus they make excellent TV commercials like this one.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oal-vBFmnRk


(I was looking to see if they had done one on cyclists. It doesn't seem so, but the search turned up this one)

 

[Lonestar]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/lond...deo-from-government-sparks-fury-a3353906.html

Sorry about this but you just reminded me of something I had heard about...Last night I forgot to look it up.

On a side note motorists...Left hooks on me have gone up ten-fold on the CS 2.Hang back dickheads.

 

[Electric_Andy]

The ozzies do seem to do these things very well without mincing their words or trying to be overly "PC" about things. And quite right. I've long been wondering why there aren't (m)any general safety adverts in between prime time TV programmes. It's as if the government is not willing to shell out money to educate and potentially reduce the number of cyclists/pedestrains/drivers deaths.

 

[Smokin Joe]

[QUOTE 4487746, member: 9609"]and yet there road deaths per capita are 86% higher than the UK - and they have only recently brought out a law to make it illegal to throw things at cyclists and drop things onto lorries when they pass under briges.[/QUOTE]
Every one else's traffic laws seem better than the UK's till you look at the statistics behind the headlines and find they're not much cop after all.

 

[MontyVeda]

whilst one could google cases where people have been prosecuted for dropping things off bridges onto lorries, there won't be anything 'specific' enough to satisfy @User's curiosity.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

I found it odd that it was suggested that Australia was somehow behind the UK in introducing a law to make it illegal to throw things at cyclists and drop things onto lorries when they pass under bridges. There is no such specific law in the UK that I am aware of (can any of the forum Occifers of the Lah clarify?)- and Australia has had very similar wider legal provisions to the UK for many years.

The remark about laws against throwing things at cyclists was ambiguous. I read it as 'things are so bad on the roads they've had to introduce laws to stop folk throwing things at cyclists and dropping things on lorries'. I can see how you read it as you did too.

GC

 

[G3CWI]

[QUOTE 4487746, member: 9609"]they have only recently brought out a law to make it illegal to throw things at cyclists[/QUOTE]

I occasionally had beer cans thrown at me while cycling across Australia in the mid 1980s. Happy days.

 

[jefmcg]

[QUOTE 4487746, member: 9609"]and yet there road deaths per capita are 86% higher than the UK[/QUOTE]

To be clear, I was praising the advert not road safety in Australia, but this led me down a rabbit hole.

I found extremely detailed statistics for Australia (a spreadsheet with one row representing each road death since 1989**) and a much less detailed year end summary of the UK. I've munged them together into a single table. The last row is how many deaths would have occurred in Australia if the rates were the same as the UK

It's quite interesting. Not only is the total deaths much higher than in the UK, but the distribution is very different. Pedestrian and cyclist deaths are proportionally close, but it's motorcycle riders and car occupants that bring the total much higher than in the UK.

I have no idea what the causes are, but a few I can think of

1. They don't salt the roads, so cars last a lot longer. There are many cars still being driven without the latest safety features. Most car safety features protect the occupants must more than other road users.
2. Those cars are cheap, so often driven by young, inexperienced drivers whose UK equivalents might not be able to afford a car, or have somewhere to park it or afford the fuel.
3. In at least parts of Australia, MOT (equivalent) is only done when a car changes hands.
   
4. The roads are vastly different, and not always as safe as the roads in the UK
5. There's a suggestion that some of the single car accidents may in fact be suicides

Pure speculation. Some of the above could be supported or disproven by examine the statistics (eg are the dead drivers noticeably younger in Australia? Are more male drivers dying in single car accidents? - violent suicides are more common in men). Or maybe there are less pedestrians and cyclists dying because there a less of them. I don't have time to prepare a thesis on this subject


** I could find the row for my Godfather/uncle. He was killed in an accident that would not occur in the UK. He pulled off the road to let an semi (artic) coming towards him pass, and it turned out to be two vehicles slip streaming each other, and the following vehicle was blinded by the dust that was kicked up by the leading vehicle that the second driver never even saw the car my uncle (and aunt and 2 others who all survived) was in - completely off the carriage way, until he struck and killed hm.

[QUOTE 4487746, member: 9609"]and they have only recently brought out a law to make it illegal to throw things at cyclists and drop things onto lorries when they pass under briges.[/QUOTE]
This is a meaningless statement. There are no - or very few - national Australian traffic laws. This is presumably a State law, and without knowing which State (or territory) it was, it's hard to draw any conclusions. And at least in Victoria, it was already criminal back in the 2010 ("endangering life) and the 1990s ("manslaughter")

 

[Spinney]

[QUOTE 4489572, member: 9609"]The car occupancy deaths is interesting, 170% higher per capita in Oz. The age of vehicles is not massively different (average age of car in UK 8 years, OZ 10 years) I wonder as Reg pointed out earlier if the remotness of some of your roads has something to do with it. Motorbikes is not that much of a surprise with your warmer sunnier weather.

The throwing things at cyclists law seems to be Canberra link I guess it has always been potentially illegal [1] but must have been at epidemic proportions for a specific law to be introduced. May be similar to mobile phone laws in the UK, you could always be charged under 'due care and attention' but introducing a specific law makes it easier to enforce

[1] for instance throwing an egg at a cyclist and missing could be very difficult to prosecute under assault or whatever, but qwith a specific law just throwing it becomes the offence.[/QUOTE]

You mean what might be an injury here, cos the ambulance got to them quite quickly, could be a fatality in Oz because of the much longer time before medical treatment?

 

[Smokin Joe]

I wonder how rigorous testing is in Oz compared to the UK? I know this is only one example and in no way representative, but I knew a couple who had emigrated to Oz but returned here after ten years. The husband had driven road trains in Australia but when he tried for a HGV licence back here he gave up after three failed attempts.

 

[Spinney]

[QUOTE 4489644, member: 9609"]Yes, I often wonder about that with where I am, for instance where I often cycle, could easily be half hour before a car come along, then with no mobile reception another 15 mins before 999 then may be another 30-45 for ambulance (so could easily be 1½hrs, over 2hrs before hospital) probably only 5 minutes in a busy city - some cyclists don't know they're born![/QUOTE]
And that's assuming the first car along stops to help...
I often wonder about fell runners. When I go walking I take spare clothing, food etc. They seem to have bugger all. But then they would be missed much sooner if they had an accident.

 

[jefmcg]

[QUOTE 4489572, member: 9609"]The car occupancy deaths is interesting, 170% higher per capita in Oz. The age of vehicles is not massively different (average age of car in UK 8 years, OZ 10 years) I wonder as Reg pointed out earlier if the remotness of some of your roads has something to do with it. Motorbikes is not that much of a surprise with your warmer sunnier weather.[/QUOTE]

Still, you get some much older cars here than you would ever see in the UK. The bell curves in both countries may be very different. The older cars would be largely in the hands of teenagers and early twenties drivers. But speculation, I have no data. Agree about the motorcycles.

As for remoteness - an accident be undiscovered happens more commonly in Australia than UK, but it would be news in both places. It would not be a significant factor.

But the less cataclysmic situation, like described here, where an accident is noticed, but the ambulances take there time, could be a factor.

[QUOTE 4489572, member: 9609"]The throwing things at cyclists law seems to be Canberra link I guess it has always been potentially illegal [1] but must have been at epidemic proportions for a specific law to be introduced.[/QUOTE]
You really can't draw any conclusions from this at all. ACT has a population less than Bristol. It's only had it's own government since 1989. Before that, Canberra and the ACT only had federal laws, and most day-to-day things in Australia are state based. So if you wanted alcohol, pornography or fireworks you drove to Canberra (ok, you could get alcohol elsewhere, but there were less rules about getting it in Canberra). So the legislature is less than 30 years old, they will still be finding their feet.

---
What's really interesting, is Australia is really trying hard. While I've been walking, cycling and driving around Melbourne I've noticed

1. Drivers give cyclists (or at least me on my clown bike) lots of room.
2. People really obey lights. Probably because they use red-light cameras here, but I have seen one or sometimes two drivers go through amber, but in London you get one or two after it's red.
3. Ditto for speed limits, in the city. No one was speeding, most were below limit
4. They treat road deaths as news. In the UK, if 3 people are killed on a train they give the incident a name, but if 3 people die on a motorway it will only get reported if it holds up traffic. In Oz, the deaths are on the state news, and during holiday periods, the totals are report to keep people aware.
5. Variable speed limits around schools and shopping precincts during busy times.
6. The ads above.

I don't know what the UK is doing better than oz - though they are - but I can't criticise what Australia is doing.