Truth and Morality

Dear Sir,

Ben Webster (Transport Times October 10th) argues that he wouldn’t inform motorists about ways that they could break the law if they didn’t know them already (dodging average speed camera detection). However it is alright to let them know about how safe SUVs are for their occupants even though other vehicles and pedestrians involved in collisions with them are more likely to be killed than if smaller cars are involved (“the growing problem of vehicle incompatibility”).

In fact for some time motorists have known that bigger and heavier cars are “safer”, and don’t need to be told so by transport journalists. The question for those with a sense of morality is not just whether the drivers of more crashworthy cars are more likely to hurt or kill others in crashes they are responsible for, but whether they are more likely to get into those crashes in the first place - precisely because they are in vehicles which are more crashworthy. Indeed, the question can be extended to consider how the culture of crashworthiness – along with engineering road environments that accommodate the careless driver through measures such as cutting down roadside trees – has contributed to the continued failure to properly reduce danger on the road.

If you believe, as the evidence and common sense tell us, that the continuing idiot-proofing of road and car environments has contributed to excessive danger on the road, then you should say so. One way of doing so is not to describe such vehicles or environments as “safer”.

Once our moral transport journalist starts using the right language, he can start addressing the real questions. For example, if the Great British Motorist is so inherently incompetent or unwilling to drive properly that s/he needs to be continually idiot-proofed, it would appear reasonable to suggest that in any collision with a pedestrian or cyclist they are assumed to be at fault, such collisions being offences of strict liability where drivers would have to prove their innocence.

The real issue is how to reduce danger on the road at source for the safety of all road users, with a system of accountability based on recognising the difference between endangering others and being at risk from road danger.

Dr. Robert Davis
Chair, Road Danger Reduction Forum,
P.O. Box 2944, LONDON NW10 2AX