Not long ago, I wrote an article after RED Driving School had “released research” that revealed the startling fact that young drivers think they’re better drivers than their parents. RED’s CEO said:
“It’s good to see that young drivers are confident in their driving ability and believe that, because they’re going through or have recently been through the driving tuition and test procedure, they’re better placed to drive safely and competently.”
So this new story makes interesting reading – not least because it has appeared on every PR site imaginable, suggesting that the most important detail to someone somewhere concerns the use of “RED” in the title. Again, something as simple as playing around with a spread sheet and a data set that is in the public domain is touted as “research”.
The reports are misleading because although they refer to the 17-24 year age group, it isn’t clear if the data given refer to this group alone, or if they are for all motorists. Similarly, look at the table below – it apparently shows “accident hotspots”:
I would just love someone to explain to me the Westminster entry. Apart from the question about why it is there at all, how the hell does it manage to get above Manchester except based on the lesser category of “number of road accidents”? Sure, this category is significant – but not in the context of the RED press release. For a location to have such a high number of accidents, but to buck the trend and have such small numbers of serious/fatal incidents, is completely overlooked in the “research”. One way or another the Westminster data are both highly significant and highly suspect, which automatically casts doubt on all the other data..
But RED’s CEO chimes in with:
Many young people are seriously hurt or killed on our roads every year and it is self evident that reducing this carnage needs to be a key objective for both Government and the driver training industry.
Research has shown that the majority of casualties in the UK are on urban roads. In 2010, a total of 98,550 casualties occurred on urban roads, with 6,500 on motorways.
Apart from stating the bleeding obvious, at no point does he explain HOW the driver training industry – or the Government, for that matter – is actually going to deal with it. The press release itself deals primarily with nonsense issues about how Manchester has made “the biggest improvement” without identifying precisely how; and how Birmingham is the “most dangerous urban area foo young drivers” without stating why. Surely, if Manchester had managed to identify, isolate, and bottle Miracle Ingredient Z-247 (read Catch-22 if you don’t know what that is) then everyone would be buying it by the truckload. Councillor Nigel Murphy (from Manchester) tries to explain:
Over the last few years we have set up dozens of 20mph zones across Manchester and we have now revealed plans to make the city’s roads even safer. This includes the introduction of Dutch-style cycle paths and bus priority lanes on major routes into the city centre.
This is complete, misinformed, political rubbish. Not one word of that in any way explains why Manchester has fallen from 1st to 10th in the rankings – it is just designed to milk to fact without understanding it. On that idiotic comment about cycle paths, any possible benefit will be completely smothered by the huge increase in the numbers of cyclists since last year – you simply cannot evaluate a change in one variable when lots of others are changing at the same time. Manchester’s “victory” results from comparing 2005 with 2011. A lot happened 9 years ago – and in the intervening 6 years – most of which had nothing to do with the current nonsense Nigel Murphy is rattling on about. And the effects of the Olympics and Tour de France (both in 2012 and 2013) have yet to be seen. This story certainly casts a lot of doubt on Manchester’s ability to stay at the bottom of the rankings once new data become available (43 accidents on just two roads over a period of about 18 months)..
The simple fact is that although Manchester may have seen a 40% reduction in its casualty rate between 2005 and 2011, we’re still talking about similar orders of magnitude in every city. Manchester’s figures just aren’t as appallingly bad as they were, that’s all.
The article also quotes RED (it doesn’t say who, but probably the CEO again):
…RED is offering enhanced lesson plans to help learner drivers not just to pass their driving test but also to be safer drivers during that critical newly-qualified phase.
This, too, is complete rubbish. All driving instructors are self-employed and no driving school can guarantee that they will all be performing to the same standard. I pick up lots of pupils who have taken lessons with other instructors – independents, local schools, and national ones (RED included) – who have certainly not experienced the “enhanced” lessons RED’s CEO is talking about. “Safe Driving For Life” is the DSA’s strapline, and ALL driving instructors should be teaching in accordance with that. If some aren’t, then unless the driving school whose name they operate under is very selective in who they take on (and most simply require a Green Badge and signs of life) they will be distributed across the entire spectrum.
If you’re still in doubt, another PR story came in at the same time – again involving RED. It refers to a deal between RED and an insurance company whereby:
…a 5% discount [is given] to all new drivers who have had 10 or more hours of professional tuition with RED Driving School. For the average 17 year-old customer, this represents a saving of around £100 on their annual premium.
This raises a huge number of questions of an ethical nature. To start with, 10 hours of lessons is not going to change how someone drives – even if the instructors were recruited straight from Mount Olympus and are fed on an exclusive diet of Ambrosia, with the threat of transfer to Hades should any of their pupils ever be involved in an accident. So is it right to offer insurance based on this?
But you also have to ask how much the average new driver is being ripped off by in the first place, when meeting such a simplistic goal is going to get you a £100 discount from a named insurer? In any case, in my experience those offering discounts are usually charging more than the rest in the first place, so there really is no discount that couldn’t be obtained by shopping around.
But the biggest question has to be how RED can make all those statements about “reducing this carnage” when it has signed a deal with an insurance company to offer cheaper insurance to drivers if they simply take a few lessons with it. It hardly seems to be a positive move towards road safety, and rather more focused on marketing.
Oh, yeah. And RED’s “research” isn’t research. Nor are current accident statistics going to be influenced (i.e. reduced) by driving instructors.
On the surface, it’s just another FOI request blown out of proportion by some local hacks. But the really frightening part is the case studies they’ve dug up.
Road in Arnold had new road works, adding to the problems already on the ring road at the Aspley Lane junction, and the closure of the railway crossing on Vernon Road (leading to drivers taking detours via the ring road).
It would appear that “dumbing down” is reaching even places like the London School Of Economics (LSE) and Carnegie Mellon University, the inmates of which establishments now appear incapable of identifying suitably robust data as the source of alleged scientific studies. They can’t even refrain from trying to give witty titles to their papers.
This has all the hallmarks of first year students cutting their teeth in learning how to publicise their “research”, no matter how amateurish the actual data. It’s just like when kids paint a picture with daubs of of colour and people pretend it is good – sometimes straying beyond normal parental encouragement and foisting the artwork on the wider public.
numerous other incompetently managed schemes involving road closures and traffic restrictions.