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Abstract
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Johnston, I.R., Muir, C., Howard, E.W. (2014) Eliminating serious injury and death from road transport. A crisis of complacency,
CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group ISBN 13-978-1-4822-0825-2
The world of road safety is a very strange world. It is still dominated by strong, often unstated assumptions. These include the central belief that death and injury are inevitable (after all this is what the word "accident" means). They are inclined towards individual behavioural explanations e.g. the pedestrian hit by a car did not take care, was not highly visible, ran out between two parked vehicles etc. On a societal scale there is an assumption that we can't reduce speeds to 30kph/20mph because this will slow traffic down, create delays, damage the economy or deprive motorists of fundamental freedoms. This is the same as putting a higher value on 1 minute of time saved for several thousand drivers than a few lives of elderly pedestrians who failed the road crossing test and were killed. The authors of this book present us with a great deal of useful information that is well-suited to the question of a total reconceptualization of road safety thinking and intervention. KW: (term-accident-vs-injury) |