“Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying To Me?” (Jeremy Paxman)

Brian Austin warns on the damage that could be done by obviously false claims; and gets Gold in the category “funniest title for an IMTD article”

Those members who attended the December meeting will recall that I had intended, under “Any Other Business” to deliver something of a rant about the withholding and twisting of information by public bodies and how it affects the public’s attitude, but that lack of time prevented it. I did however promise to do so for Master Tutor, so here it is. I should also say that I am aware that not all IMTD members will agree with all I say; by the same token, nothing in the article should be thought to be official IMTD policy.

At the meeting, I drew attention to an article that had appeared shortly before in the Daily Telegraph, viz the Motoring Section of 11 November 2007 under the heading “Speed Kills”. This drew attention to a new book “Scared To Death” published by Christopher Booker and Richard North that highlights the damage done by scare stories, from salmonella, and satanic child abuse, through to passive smoking, and global warming. The article was an edited extract from the chapter on speed and suggested that it was a scare that costs lives. Basically, it suggested that the Government was deliberately misleading the public over the extent to which speed was responsible for road deaths. When launching its new road safety strategy in 2000, the DfT claimed that speed was a major contributory factor in about a third of all road accidents. The “excessive” and “inappropriate” speed had helped “to kill about 1,200 people” a year and “was far more than any other single contributor to casualties on our roads.” The evidence cited for this statement was, apparently, TRL Report 323. Since the Report cost £45 not many people looked at it but those who did, it seems, found that the evidence referred to above was simply not there. Speed was the major cause of only 7% of accidents. Indeed by TRL’s own figures, speed was the “definite” cause in only 4.5% of accidents.

This should not be a surprise to ADIs, particularly those who have been in the industry for some time. They will recall that DfT and DSA (based on TRL research) always stressed that by far the major cause of road accidents was the turning right manoeuvre.

The article suggests that, in their anxiety to embrace new technology and to justify the cost of it, Ministers have been forced to manipulate statistics and, in effect, to tell lies, on the Goebbels doctrine that if you repeat something often enough, people will believe it. Apparently, one person not taken in by all this is the Chief Constable of Durham who refuses to fall in line. He found that of the 1,900 collisions annually in his county, only about 60 (ie 3%) involved cars that were exceeding the speed limit, and that of those drink or drugs was invariably the real cause.

Does this really matter, you may ask? Speed kills! Well, no it doesn’t; it is the inappropriate use of speed that may kill. What is more dangerous – to drive at 30 mph down a side street full of children playing or down the M40 at 90 mph on a summer Sunday morning at 6 am? I think we all know the answer to that one. Lying by politicians or, as the late Alan Clark put it, being economical with the actualite, offends me personally but, more importantly, has contributed to the low opinion that the public has of those elected to serve in Parliament. Jeremy Paxman has confessed to musing, whilst interviewing a politician, “why is this lying bastard lying to me?”. It is small wonder, therefore, that the public tends to treat official decisions and notices with suspicion, if not downright contempt. This, in turn, can have disastrous consequences, as I will demonstrate.

How many of us have driven along a motorway with the signs saying “slow down, accident ahead” or some such message and then finding no accident at all? I once drove the whole length of the M18 where for no apparent reason the signs were flashing “50 mph”. The other Sunday evening on the M42 a gantry was flashing “50”, the next one “40” and the third one “?” (sorry, that’s the nearest I can get to the symbol) again, for no apparent reason. Incidentally, on the same road on a Sunday evening a few months back, the variable speed limits were operating at 50 mph, yet there was no traffic in front of me for at least a quarter of a mile. It is no wonder that the motoring public tends to ignore many of these signs and wait until they see a reason to slow down.

How many of us know a road or roads in our area with an unrealistically low speed limit? In my area, a bit of dual carriageway has had the inner lane hatched off and traffic lights installed at the only junction (there are no side roads) . Why? Because of one single accident, albeit a bad one. The traffic lights I can understand but why hatch off the inside lane? The blame culture is increasingly, it seems, affecting the judgement of those who decide these things. Again, such situations breed contempt amongst the motoring public.

And what about speed limits in general? There was a time when you knew pretty well what the limit was on the stretch of road on which you were driving. On rural single carriage ways it was 60 mph until you came to a village when it would drop to 30 mph or 40 mph before increasing again after you passed through. Nowadays, how many of us have been driving along a rural road and realized that we don’t know what the limit on that stretch of road actually is? I know that I have. It could be anything from 30 mph to 60 mph, such is the proclivity for highway authorities to impose varying limits. Coupled with the increasing tendency for authorities to allow speed limit signs to be obscured by vegetation, and the lack of “repeater” signs, it is becoming a bit of a nightmare, especially since there is no apparent reason for the change.

Finally, there is the question of stopping distances. In his excellent review of the changes to the new Highway Code, Mike Collins suggested:

I fear that there is a danger of young people – and older ones for that matter - seeing these exaggerated figures as ‘Granny State crying Wolf’, and ignore it and therefore other relevant advice. The headlines in my local paper, night after night, suggest that they do. The Rule does specify that the distances are a general guide only but I would have preferred it to add “It is true that a modem car can stop more quickly, but it may not.”

In point of fact, the stopping distances are unchanged from the 1947 edition (when they were introduced) and thus ignore all the developments in brake and tyre technology over the past 60 years. In short, they are ludicrously incorrect. I believe that some two or three years ago the DSA was charged with reviewing stopping distances. Nothing has been heard of the results. I strongly suspect that these have been kicked into the long grass on the grounds that any reduction would “send out the wrong message”, especially given the emphasis on speed mentioned above. Mike perceptively lays his finger on the danger of drivers ignoring the general message about braking because they know the published figures are incorrect. This, of course, is the general tenor of this piece and I would depart from Mike’s conclusions only to say that in my view the correct stopping distances should be published. To do otherwise is dishonest. I wonder if anyone has failed the theory test for not knowing something that bears no relation to reality.

I could go on but I think you’ve got the message. How can an ADI teach someone to drive properly and to respect the motoring laws when they both know the rubbish being spouted by politicians and official bodies.

Finally, may I advise “Beware of zealots”? As I write this, there has been an article on the TV lunchtime news about the new penalties for causing death by careless driving and the fact that a momentary lapse in concentration will not necessarily lead to imprisonment. Interviewed by Sophie Rayworth was a mother whose son had been killed by a careless driver and who campaigns on road safety. The latter was strongly of the opinion that anyone causing death, even through a moment’s lapse, should be sent to prison. “But what about a mother who hears her child suddenly scream from the back seat” said Sophie? “That is no justification” said the mother, “A prison sentence should follow.”

At that point I thought, “Not only have you lost your sense of reality but also your ability to be a mother. You want revenge, not justice ”. There but for the grace of God go all of us. Zealots, whether they be Chief Constables who want zero tolerance on speed limits, organizations that want speed cameras disguised as Coke cans or bereaved parents who want revenge, are to be avoided.