The UK DFT agency has released its 2004 road accidents statistics report, which makes for interesring reading. The good news for bikers is that serious and fatal accidents were down, by a substantial 16%. But the bad news is that the department's own flawed system of calculating statistical trends lists this as only being a 10% reduction.
This is despite the government's DVLA department recording that an increasing number of two wheelers are licensed for road use. There were 1,060,000 mopeds, scooters and motorcycles taxed for use in 2004, up from 825,000 back in 2000. That suggests motorcycling is getting much, much safer - not by a little bit, but by a huge margin. A fact which the government, for whatever reasons, choose to downplay.
Once again, the government fails to separate riders who are riding illegally, underage, uninsured, or being pursued by the Police, from its running totals of all motorcycle accidents. It also includes accidents which occur on footpaths.
The notion that trends can be accurately defined and forecast, whilst including those who are riding stolen bikes, riding on drugs, or drunk, or riding under the age of 16 having never had any tuition, is laughable. Common sense - and repeated accident reports in the local press - suggest that a substantial percentage of motorcycle `accidents' involve illegal riders. Nobody seems interested in counting exactly how many. It could 5% of all serious bike accidents, it could be just 1%, but we just don't know.
One interesting statistic is buried within the reams of tables within the 2004 report; the 1994-1998 average number of under 17 year olds involved in road accidents reported was about 1583. In 2004 it was a whopping 3,048. There's no comment on this dramatic rise, or what the government intends to do to stop underage driving/riding of course.
PTW policy is based on poor number crunchingLB has a question; why should UK road policy, and Police policy regarding motorcycle riders, be based on data which includes an unknown percentage of incidents, which might well be caused not by illegal riders, who have no right to be on the the road - or the footpath?
Bikers are being hounded by the Police as if we are the criminals responsible for ever more accidents. We are not. The figures are going down. But the decrease would be far greater if the under 17s, and the uninsured, older non licensed drivers, plus the disqualified, were taken off the roads. There seems to be a definate trend of trying to bad-mouth biking under this government.
Related LinksDFT Accident Report
