{"id":8507,"date":"2012-03-10T22:18:29","date_gmt":"2012-03-10T22:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=8507"},"modified":"2012-03-10T22:18:29","modified_gmt":"2012-03-10T22:18:29","slug":"how-to-mangle-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=8507","title":{"rendered":"How To Mangle Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Boston Standard reports<\/a> that the borough\u2019s young drivers face \u201cone of the highest risks of being injured in car crashes in the country\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Chavs\"Let\u2019s just get things straight here. The figures do not<\/strong> mean that your chances of having an accident increase just by moving to Boston \u2013 it\u2019s the higher proportion of teenagers brought up there only having a single helix in their DNA that is to blame.<\/p>\n

Yet again, the real problem is being shoved under the carpet. The reason Boston teenagers are having more accidents is that they are bigger prats than in other places. Someone needs to be dealing with that \u2013 not trying to blame it on statistics that they don\u2019t really understand.<\/p>\n

\u201cExperts\u201d are trying to suggest that poor public transport and long distances from home to school are to blame. But this argument is based on totally separate \u201cstatistics\u201d designed to dumb things down. It would appear that if you live in Boston, it\u2019s a 3 mile round trip even to go to the toilet, and you need a passport to go to school because you have to move through several international borders!<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s do what the Boston Standard didn\u2019t do, and actually read the report, which you can access here<\/font>.<\/p>\n

Instead of adopting the Boston Standard\u2019s selective and scaremongering approach, lets list ALL<\/strong> the factors the report identified.<\/p>\n

\n

Analysis has identified a number of common factors present in young driver collisions, including the following:<\/font><\/p>\n

    \n
  • They tend to drive older cars with less crash protection<\/font><\/li>\n
  • There are often three or more casualties in their collisions<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Their collisions often occur at night and at weekends<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Their collisions often occur on wet roads<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Their collisions often occur on minor roads in rural areas with a 60mph speed limit<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Their collisions are often single vehicle so involve no other road user<\/font><\/li>\n
  • They often occur on bends, particularly on rural roads<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Their vehicle often skids, and in some cases then overturns<\/font><\/li>\n
  • Their vehicle often leaves the road, and in many cases hits a roadside object or enters a ditch<\/font><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Summarising, you can say that young drivers drive bangers filled with their mates, and mostly at night (a progression from arseing about on skateboards and BMX bikes outside the chippie). Since they\u2019re usually travelling at speed, their accidents occur on wet roads and bends \u2013 particularly on roads where it is possible to put your foot down \u2013 which results in the car skidding and overturning, and often hitting objects off the road (i.e. trees and posts).<\/font><\/p>\n

    The Boston Standard appears to have only seen the one about rural roads and taken it out of context with the others.<\/font><\/p>\n

    The report notes:<\/font><\/p>\n

    \n

    Nationally, the research found that young drivers who are from rural areas are significantly overrepresented within the collision statistics compared to their urban counterparts.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    So, young drivers in rural areas DO<\/strong> have more accidents overall. When you look at the report\u2019s bar chart for the three areas it has identified \u2013 urban, town, and rural \u2013 you see that there is a progression from the first category up to the third. Basically, in places where you can\u2019t drive fast, you stand less chance of hurting yourself than you do in places where you CAN<\/strong> drive fast. It\u2019s bloody obvious.<\/p>\n

    The report further discovers that there is no difference between the different areas for drivers 30 and over. Tellingly, it uses the term \u201cmature adults\u201d. Now we\u2019re getting to the nitty-gritty of the cause.<\/p>\n

    The report then adds:<\/p>\n

    \n

    It would therefore suggest that rural roads themselves are not responsible for the increased collision involvement of rural young drivers.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    The Boston Standard and it’s \u201cexperts\u201d are talking rubbish, then, when they try to sweep the problem under the rug.<\/p>\n

    The report continues:<\/p>\n

    \n

    There is very little difference between young and older drivers for the speed limit of the road on which they were involved in collisions.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Quite. It is inappropriate speed that is the issue. Inappropriate for the situation, and inappropriate for the driver\u2019s skills (or lack thereof).<\/p>\n

    The report says:<\/p>\n

    \n

    The mileage data shows that rural residents have 31% higher annual average mileage than their urban counterparts. For adult drivers, this does not lead to a higher collision risk\u2026 Young rural drivers, however, are 37% more likely to be involved in a collision than urban young drivers.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    This is just stating the obvious. The longer you\u2019re in the car driving it, the more likely you are to have an accident if you\u2019re already in a higher risk group.<\/p>\n

    But what shoots all of this out of the water is the risk map included in the report. Some of the most rural areas \u2013 and ones with the most winding and out-of-the-way roads \u2013 such as ALL of Scotland, and large parts of the northern areas have risk indices that are around the the norm (100). The peaks correspond generally to very specific areas of well-known idiot-country. The lowest indices relate to exclusively urban areas \u2013 the report makes that clear,<\/p>\n

    The report concludes that younger drivers are at risk, particularly on rural roads. That has been known for years. The report also concludes that it isn\u2019t the roads themselves that are the problem. It is specifically younger drivers, for whom the risks increase the more rural their driving areas are. It states clearly:<\/p>\n

    \n

    \u2026this would imply that there is something about rurality and young drivers (through inexperience and\/or attitude) that leads to increased collision risk.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    THIS IS PRECISELY THE PROBLEM.<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

    It must be obvious that since you cannot create experience out of nothing, then care is needed while it is being acquired. Young drivers simply do not exercise care \u2013 they have appalling attitudes on the road. And they are clearly less likely to do so in certain areas \u2013 Boston might have come out in the top risk group, but there are plenty of considerably more rural locations which didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

    Looking at my own region, I note that Mansfield and Bassetlaw feature well above the norm. And yet Nottingham \u2013 which I can assure you has it\u2019s fair share of complete prats \u2013 is right down at the bottom (i.e. the good) end. The numbers don\u2019t seem to prove anything when you consider that detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Boston Standard reports that the borough\u2019s young drivers face \u201cone of the highest risks of being injured in car crashes in the country\u201d. Let\u2019s just get things straight here. The figures do not mean that your chances of having an accident increase just by moving to Boston \u2013 it\u2019s the higher proportion of teenagers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,86,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-bad-drivers","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}