By Jeremy Sirrell,
A recent story in the evening Echo has revealed the ten ‘worst’ places for speeding in England and Wales. The top of the list was Warwickshire with a fine issued for every 4.58 vehicles. Second and close behind was Devon and Cornwall, and third was Greater London.
The top three areas alone should give us pause for thought. Warwickshire may be regarded as a fairly average county inasmuch as it combines both elements of rural England with urban areas. It is in a busy part of the country and well populated, so perhaps it is not so surprising that it is high on the list. However, the second is Devon and Cornwall, ahead of even Greater London. The fact that Greater London ranks high is hardly surprising – it is almost impossible to go into London these days and come out without at least some kind of penalty, whether it is for doing more than 20 miles an hour on an ordinary urban road, driving in a bus lane, waiting on a cross-hatched area, failing to pay the congestion charge or one of a number of numerous possible infringements which have now been made possible by authorities that seem to hate the idea that people might want to visit the capital city in their car.
Do these statistics actually tell us anything useful at all? The answer to this question is almost certainly ‘no’. For a start, the statistics only tell us the number of fines issued per number of vehicles on the road. The number of fines issued is directly proportionate to enforcement and these days, that very often means enforcement cameras. Many of the offences caught will be offences that otherwise probably would not be recorded by a police officer exercising intelligence and judgement, but which are, of course, entirely beyond both a camera and the system that operates it. It is equally true, of course, that there are many speeding offences that will go entirely undetected because the part of the country in which they are committed has few speed cameras to catch impatient drivers.
The real issue here is not which parts of the country are the worst for speeding (we can have no real idea), but whether speeding is, as the article claims in its header, ‘one of the biggest dangers associated with driving’. What evidence we do have suggests that statement is simply not true. Most recent home office statistics on the specific point indicated that speeding was directly responsible for only four per cent of accidents that occurred on British roads. Speeding can, doubtless, make an accident or at least the effects of an accident worse but is very rarely responsible for the accident itself.
The overwhelming majority of accidents are caused by either reckless behaviour, carelessness or simple inattention. Those are the true causes of almost all accidents and therefore are the real dangers on our roads. Now, reliable statistics indicating which parts of the country had the most careless, inconsiderate or inattentive drivers would actually be helpful. However, needless to say, no such statistics either exist or ever will.