hedgehog

While I'm being concerned about road safety it seems that significant improvements in pedestrian safety could be made by banning buses from urban areas. The following graphs taken from the official "Road Casulties Great Britian" publication make interesting viewing:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pedrisk.html

NotoriousREV

How can the risk to pedestrian for "all vehicles" be lower than for buses alone?

imlach

Given it's an anti-speed camera website, you'd expect presentation of statistics to support their cause.

You can read ANYTHING you like into statistics

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Average over all vehicles - a mean, not a total.

NotoriousREV

That makes sense, I was expecting it to be cumulative. Perhaps I'm being a bit thick?

jaycee

Ban pedestrians instead!!

hedgehog

You may be able to do anything you like with stats but the raw figures speak for themselves and are referenced from the page, go over and take a look for yourself. If you can make these figures say anything different then feel free to put up a page yourself, or contact Paul Smith at Safespeed to highlight any errors he may have made.

The other thing you must be careful is not to confuse anti-camera with pro-safety and, by default, pro-motorist. There is no mention of cameras at all on this page, it merely highlights they type of vehicle that presents most danger to the pedestrian. In view of the current drive by the government to put us out of our cars it is important that all motorists stand together to defend our position. For some MP who gets driven around London, or green nutter using public transport in London, being without a car may be viable. For those living and working in rural areas or who work hours outwith those normally covered by public transport then our cars are a necessity and we have to fight them all the way it we are not to return to the stone age where the rural population rarely travelled more than a few miles from home and lived a subsistance lifestyle.

imlach

....and the sooner people can stop referring to people as "green nutters", the better too.

Just because some people are interested in the environment does not make someone a "nutter".

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Hmmm, slight miss-interpretation of the results.

Think about it:

HGV's rarely go into town centres, only to make deliveries - early morning or late night - no pedestrians to hit!

Most large sized town centres are pedestrianised, or only allow buses. Ones that do allow cars usually have little or no on-street parking into the centre equating to more buses than cars. Add that buses don't handle or stop very well, have larger blind spots, and require more driver observation on mirrors to ensure they don't side swipe other vehicles. The results are pretty obvious.

boomer

All the more reason to ban the slow, noisy, smelly, polluting, subsidised out of our taxes, yet still expensive, road-space stealing, traffic-flow blocking, pedestrian un-friendly monstrosities!!!!!

mb

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Yeah...Ban buses, increase road tax for cars.

Excellent money spinner for the coffers

hedgehog

The results are indeed pretty obvious, in the town centres that I have direct experience of (Stornoway, Inverness, Glasgow, Belfast, Ballymena, Dublin, Evesham, London, Paris to list a reasonably broad range) there are very few areas where traffic is restricted to only buses and these areas may allow taxis and don't seem to have a higher pedestrian density than other areas where cars are allowed. However, I would say that if you stand by the road in any of these towns you will find that car traffic outnumbers bus traffic by 10 or even 100 to 1 even in the most busy shopping areas. Parked cars rarely kill pedestrians, though I take the point that lack of parking may limit the number of cars driving in city centre areas. It doesn't seem to have this effect in any city centre I have been in.

In view of the fact that the stats show buses killing significantly more people per mile than cars and also that I can think of very, very few urban areas where buses are not outnumbered at least 10:1 and more likely 100:1 by cars I believe your points reinforce the point that Paul is making on his web page. A bus in a town centre is significantly more dangerous for the pedestrian than a car, without even taking into consideration the particulates pouring out of its exhaust pipe.

Your point that buses are inherently more dangerous by design is also a valid one but, again bearing in mind that the figures are deaths per 100 million km, this just reinforces the point and also raises some interesting questions about why large trucks are not as likely to kill a pedestrian. They certainly share the performance limitations you outline and you may be correct that, by and large, they have less exposure to city centre pedestrians than a bus might. However, this makes the "all roads" figures more interesting. I appreciate that there are fewer pedestrians to hit outside of urban areas but buses still lead the charge by a considerable percentage. I simply can't believe that the average bus is exposed to 13 times more pedestrians than the average van for example, bearing in mind that this average bus must be significantly weighted by the coaches we see spending their whole life up and down the motorway. I also suspect that a similar situation will apply to HGVs.

The figures are certainly interesting and worthy of discussion. I am a regular bus user and depending on work requirements often use the bus for my commute to and from work but for 7 years I also used the bus every day on a rural route. I am also a regular car user and yet the only vehicle I have ever been in that has hit a pedestrian was a bus.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Perhaps, as a wildcard speculation. Some pedestrian killed were trying to catch the bus and ran out infront to stop it with fatal consequences?

Point being some pedestrians don't appreciate that most vehicles cannot stop on a 50p coin, so with our "pedestrian friendly" town centres people walk out on crossings, between cars or looking the wrong way (on one way roads) etc oblivious to the danger.

Another point about certain buses....that being new quiet rear engined and LPG versions - you don't hear them! the noise is at the back, nothing comming from the front, unlike any other front engined vehicle on the road. I nearly (rather stupidly on my behalf) got my head swiped off by a passing bus as I poked my head out from behind a 4x4 parked on double yellows (...so ban 4x4's ) to see if it was clear to cross, it was close, too close infact, and I didn't hear the bus until it had passed.