Martin Parkinson raises an interesting question (comment on previous post): what should be the reaction to an accident that, a priori, was an extremely low probability event? He suggests that “any attempt to reverse the counterproductive aspects of ‘health and safety culture’ is doomed to failure”. After an accident he argues that most people […]
Presentation for PRIAN Public Realm Course, Bedford, 28 April 2008.
Traditional highway engineering assumes that safety requires the spatial segregation of pedestrians, cyclists and motorized vehicles or, where this is not possible, rigorously enforced rules, signs and signals dictating temporal segregation. Road users, according to the established paradigm, are irresponsible, stupid, selfish automatons whose safety can […]
On the first of February 2008 I sent an email to the Department of Transport at - road.safety@dft.gsi.gov.uk. It said:
“In your press release of 31 January you state: “Seatbelts have prevented an estimated 60,000 deaths and 670,000 serious injuries since 31 January 1983 when seatbelts were made mandatory for drivers and front seat passengers.” […]
Posted in risk, risk compensation on November 17th, 2007 2 Comments »
In October 2007 the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published a Status Report (PDF: 1MB) complaining about my article “Britain’s Seat Belt Law should be Repealed” (PDF: 0.2MB) (published as “Seat Belt Laws – Repeal them?” in the June 2007 issue of the statistical journal Significance). It went on […]
In most countries arguments about seat belt legislation are dead. But it remains a live issue in the United States where such laws are a matter for individual states. As a consequence there exists in the United States a variety of laws and levels of enforcement, and considerable debate about their effectiveness and moral legitimacy.
A […]
The BBC’s Today Programme is running a competition called Christmas Repeal in which listeners are invited to nominate an existing law that should be repealed.
I nominate Britain’s seat belt law.
[Update 23 December. Despite my high hopes and much encouragement, my Immodest Proposal did not succeed. It did not pass through the Today Programme’s editorial […]
