Car travel is safer? That will a surprise people who watch the nightly news and drive among the morons granted licences these days. More statistics (aka lies) engineered to make things look better than they really are.

Travel by car is getting safer...and the sun rose in the east this morning.

Still it seems that it doesn't hurt to remind people of this since some (no names but their initials are ttbn) think that the data can't be right because of their own jaundiced observations.

BTW statistics are only lies when people don't want them to be true and haven't the wherewithal to explain why the data is wrong.

I'm a little surprised the article doesn't mention the most accurate and revealing number on this topic - the number of deaths per 1 billion kms travelled. This, it seems, is the go-to statistic when comparing across countries and over time. In Australia that number has fallen from 49.3 deaths per 1 billion kms travelled in 1970 to 4.9 deaths ie a ten fold improvement.

Reasons are many - the campaign against drink-driving, making wearing of seat-belts mandatory, improved medical and emergency services, and massive improvements in car safety.

One thing that isn't mentioned here or often is improved roads. About a decade ago the NRMA came out with a statistic based on police accident reports that found that poor road design and maintenance was just as big a factor in road deaths as speeding. Since that wasn't what the government or even the NRMA wanted to hear, the report was quickly suppressed and isn't available any longer. Nonetheless, improved roads both in regards to motorways and the 'black-spot' programmes have had a dramatic effect on vehicle accidents.

Yes, that may well be the case, but road safety needs to be affordable!

Imagine a clutch cable that needs to be replaced costing $360 And that's before the cost of instaling it, a five-minute operation that could swell the repair bill by twice as much again?

The consequence of our abandonment of our once viable local car industry and former car sales agencies now completely dependant on service to generate same or better profit margins.

So, we'll see those tyres that need to be changed made to do another thousand miles, ditto, brake pads etc.

All while billions collected as fuel excise is diverted from the road funding it is collected for and used to swell the war chest of the incumbent government?

Yes, the road toll could and should be reduced by making both cars and roads safer!

That said, the annual road toll is eclipsed by the annual death toll attributable to some very nasty brain cancers, where the average life span is just 14 months, [from diagnosis to death,] with less than 2% surviving beyond five years.

Similarly ovarian cancer, but with a doubled life expectancy?

And the proven miracle cancer cure, bismuth213, withheld by government created regulations that forbid nuclear energy, but particularly, walk away safe MSR thorium nuclear energy.

Given one needs fissile U233 Which is what fertile thorium is converted to in the preparation blanket of a nuclear reactor, to make universally affordable (virtually free) bismuth 213.

The only other and horrendously expensive, massive energy consuming method of manufacture, is to bombard radium with particles in a particle accelerator. Thus keeping it millionaire medicine!

And thousand having their lives truncated as the consequence of this betrayal (calloused indifference) by those pollies with the power to change those regulations with the stroke of a pen!
Alan B.

mhaze,

What an arrogant little piece of work you are. Other people's opinions are "jaundiced" because you don't agree with them. Smart arses like you are two a penny around here, along with your overlong pontifications.

1. So, in pursuit of greater safety, I've been lucky enough to afford a new car with much of the safety gear on offer, eg:

- automonous emergency breaking,

- blind spot/lane change emergency alert

- speed sign reading

- speeding warning

- red light/speed camera alert before you go through them (SHOULD THIS BE ILLEGAL?).

All very useful and easy to overly rely on.

2. The future promise of fully autonomous auto-piloted vehicles involves many dangers, eg:

- a full traffic/driving network computer "crash" meaning 1,000s of simultaneous actual car crashes (talking Sydney and Melbourne congestion of cars usually travelling too fast with mass tail-gating, minimal car separation, etc)

- and mainly the DROP IN DRIVINNG SKILLS of drivers who maybe once a year are meant to takeover from auto-pilot in EMERGENCIES.

- and NEW DRIVERS who were born after cars became fully autonomous?

Oversteering, suddenly breaking, future mayhem!

BTW - TO ACTUALLY FIND AND READ ROSS ELLIOTT'S ARTICLE

CLICK ON http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=20111&page=0

ttbn,

Your views aren't jaundiced because I don't agree with them. They're jaundiced because they reject, ignore and, I suspect, are ignorant of virtually every statistic and data compiled by virtually every first-world government over the past 30 years.

Ignoring the nose on your face because of a few silly observations is the opposite of intellectual discourse.

On the other hand, perhaps you have access to other data and I look forward to you offering it up to support your views. But you need to know that the liar-liar-pants-on-fire argument doesn't carry much weight with me - at least not since the third grade.

Vehicles may well be becoming safer but driving skills are not improving.
Courtesy, Consideration and Common Sense are sadly missing in far too many cases.
When this is added to there being TOO MANY PEOPLE problems will arise.

//Vehicles may well be becoming safer but driving skills are not improving.//

They'll be driving themselves soon enough anyway.

Finally, a topic I know most about.
Those who don't know me, I am a retired Industrial Designer, my business was Auto Design/Engineering.
I used to design vehicles, modifications and CBU, cars.
So, it is true, cars HAVE been getting safer.
What is generally not known is why.
The problem with the new gen cars is the 'one size fits all' fallacy.
All this safety hoo, haa began because drivers (people) were/are absolutely useless.
Starting with the stupid female 'children' who get their drivers license literally as children.
I see them 'flying' down the road, and what I see is someone who is so clueless, they should NOT have a drivers license.
The license allows this child to be 'in control' of a motor vehicle.
What I see, every time is the car is in control and the driver is merely the passenger.
No idea about car dynamics.
These twats have been taught how drive on the road.
They have not been taught how to drive,..........a car!
And this is then carried through to womanhood.
So it is that car makers have slowly introduced safety features in cars, thereby making them safer.
Now having said this, I don't like the modern car, it is flawed in ways that the people are not aware, and when highlighted, don't care.
The first is simple and because the general public do not have the ability to understand style and form, they use moronic reasoning when choosing a car, new or second hand, such as, I liked the colour, or the salesman was so nice, or a million other stupid reasons, but not one about the styling or the shape.
These new Asian cars are the pits, as a designer, knowing the difference they are shear excrement, and I mean REALLY BAD!
Yet you all blunder along ignorantly and aimlessly, and buy them.
Next the 'autonomous' car.
BIG mistake, unless they are used in a fixed environment, they will kill more people than they save.
There already is evidence.
There are too many variables out there to be able to program and allow for.

Re: "stupid female 'children'" and "carried through to womanhood."

Au contraire! Its we males who are mainly to blame - see "Car Accident Statistics 2018"

at http://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/car-accident-statistics.html

"By Gender

Males made up 72% of all road fatalities in Australia from 2013-2017. Males were overrepresented in crash categories where the road user was in control of the crash situation such as drivers, cyclists and motorcyclists, indicating a potential higher rate of risk taking behaviours in men than in women. Men aged 25 to 34 were found to be 34% more likely to be involved in a car accident than other drivers.

From 2012 to 2017 males made up 70% of fatalities that occurred as a result of drink driving. Males also have a higher number of reported incidents of speeding and mobile phone use in the nation. Land transport accidents made the top 20 causes of death for men in 2016 but not for women. Women were reported to have 7000 fewer crash-insurance claims from 2014-2016."

Plantagenet, sorry mate, not into random stats.
They are conveniently contrived to suite a particular outcome or agenda.
I 'see' the results of blind incompetence and blatant arrogance.
When a guy prangs, it's because he's overstretching the boundaries, either through bravado or just pushed it too far.
When these bimbo's stuff up, it is totally due to in-ability or incompetence.
One such incident recently, close to home, involving my son's new BRZ, STI and his girlfriends sister. (the BRZ was brand new, only weeks old)
Visiting his girlfriend at home, parks in the same spot he has always done before, in the driveway.
The girlfriends sister just got her license only two three weeks prior, without looking behind whilst reversing out the driveway, reverses into the side of his car.
Then like a stupid little ignorant sh!t, instead of displaying remorse or shame or anything resembling maturity, begins laughing at what turned out to be over $6,000+ worth of damage.
The stupid rancid little pathetic excuse for a human, displayed typically arrogant and entitled response, no sign of acknowledgement as to gravity of what she had just done.
Fortunately I have some influence in the motor vehicle repair industry and a new door and parts, painted and voila, new car again.
Thanks to me, no thanks to her.
She has since had two more accidents, none of them reported, so you see Plantagenet, why stats mean nothing.
So if you look into those numbers, you will find that there are anomaly's and therefore not always relevant.