Let's get scientific

Does anyone know whether our roads are getting safer or not? I’m asking for a reason. On the one hand we read that road deaths dropped by 20% between 2007 and 2008, which sounds like good news; on the other hand eight people reportedly died on the roads over the St Patrick’s festival, which extended to Wednesday March 18.

The latter deaths prompted Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy to warn motorists to stop their reckless behaviour…
But four of the dead were pedestrians. That’s 50%. We have no information on how they died and presumably the Gardai are still analysing the data and evidence. It may be that it was reckless drivers who were at fault. But it might also be reckless pedestrians, in which case it’s a bit rich to be wagging the finger at the drivers.
As I say, one doesn’t know and sure as hell I’m not making any allegations. But one side effect of the clampdown on ‘drink driving’ is that some people walk to the pub or restaurant. And things being as they are, what with drink driving limits being for drivers and not pedestrians, some people drink more than they normally would. Well, they’re not driving, are they?
I suppose people think that drunken walking is of a different order…
So how are we to square the Commissioner’s stance (that the deaths were due to reckless behaviour) with that of Road Safety Authority spokesman Brian Farrell who attributed the substantial 2008 decline in road deaths to ‘individual changes in behaviour’ (Irish Independent, December 30).
“Everybody out there has obviously made a conscious effort… to change their behaviour and to take responsibility for their actions on the road,” he said.
Well, it can’t be both. They’ve either changed their behaviour or not.
Of course, it may be that it is policing and clamping down that has changed behaviour. But we also have to factor in other key variables that are in play, including the improvement in our road infrastructure (especially the increase in four-lane roads); the decline (in 2008) in young male Eastern European workers on the roads; and the general improvement in car technology…
Exactly what each contributes is hard to quantify which is why the Gardai so often fall back to lazy, hazy and imprecise soundbites.
Thankfully, here and there, a voice can be heard that refreshes the parts that others don’t reach.
In January the head of the Garda Inspectorate Kathleen O’Toole took issue with many aspects of the approach taken by the Gardaí to road safety when she spoke to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice.
It’s been a staple of public policy making here that alcohol is a prime cause of road deaths, but O’Toole told the Committee that “we were unable to get the statistics to show what percentage (of fatalities) are due to alcohol”…
Fascinating. She’s pointing to the essence of scientific analysis, which is to examine the evidence and reach conclusions according to what it shows, not according to what your ideology says you should find.
And you can’t say that fatalities are due to alcohol unless you can clearly identify a causal process. In fact, a driver with a skinful might not actually be responsible for a crash even though s/he was drunk at the wheel. As a sceptic would say ‘show me the evidence’…
As it happens, Ms O’Toole came to her post from the United States where they have a much more stringent attitude to evidence and analysis.
One welcomes her no-nonsense approach. We need more of that, and not just regarding road safety. Part of our present economic trouble derives from our willingness to follow the herd, to accept the dominant ideology and analysis, even though common sense told us that it was pie in the sky.
Give me the cold voice of common sense any day.