reporting of road fatalities

RobAMerc

Can anybody explain to me why every news station broadcasts every road fatality that occurs in this country, yet a not inconsiderable few die on a daily basis for even more needless reasons?
Why don’t they comment on every person who dies needlessly due to our poor health service?
Or die due to the total lack of support for mental health patients, that sees more of our population dying by suicide every year than on our roads?

Is the car to blame for just about everything in this country? Or just the scapegoat ?

cabrwab

Scapegoat me thinks.
Bad weather=car, deaths=car, recession=car!!

But i sense an undertone of something bad happened.

biko

Because of news value. Most people drive and have had near collisions so they can relate to that.
It's harder to relate to people dying in hospitals when you've only been in one once, even harder still to contemplate mental illness and subsequent suicide.

omega man

Particularly reports from the north

Biro

Well, the attitude is that most road deaths are caused by very silly and easily avoidable acts.
Suicides are a completely different kettle of fish. Some are under dubious circumstances, also due to the nature of these it's not fair to broadcast them on national radio or TV.
Health service deaths might be hard to determine. Lots of people die in hospitals every day. Who's to say that a more effectively run health service would keep any of them alive or not? You can be sure that if someone who was on a bed in a corridor in a hospital who didn't get any treatment died that it would make the news.

Gurgle

RobAMerc wrote: »

Can anybody explain to me why every news station broadcasts every road fatality that occurs in this country, yet a not inconsiderable few die on a daily basis for even more needless reasons?...

As biko said, its news and it could happen to any of us, any day.

Add to that the fact that every single death on the roads is a direct result of somebody doing something stupid. What annoys me is how they are reported; "Two people were killed when the car they were travelling in left the road and struck a tree..."

wtf?
the car was on autopilot?

r3nu4l

Irelands obsession with Road deaths as National News is strange. Perhaps it's because Ireland is so small but in the UK, unless there are a lot of people killed (5+) or a celebrity dies in a crash (Diana), then it's ignored for the most part and picked up by local newspapers.

At the moment, teenage/young adult suicides in Wales are the big news in the UK. There's a small village in Wales where about 20+ teens/young twenty-somethings have committed suicide. That's the big news. However, other suicides up and down the country are ignored.

When I worked in London there were 3 suicides in two weeks on trains that I was travelling on in the run up to Christmas. People wait at stations where the train doesn't stop then jump onto the line as the train approaches. Those rarely get reported unless there's something else suspicious or newsworthy about it.

So in summary, it seems that it's just a fixation by the media, nothing more imo. Easy copy to fill a few paragraphs and get all moral and high-horsish about!

There's a road in Cambridge the A1307 that's nicknamed "The road of Death" by the local papers. There's a motion for the limit to be reduced from 60 to 50 mph to help reduce deaths. :rolleyes: I know the circumstances of 2 of the last five deaths on the road. In one, some poor girl walked out in front of a car after getting off her bus, the car that hit her was doing 40 mph. In the other a drugged up guy was driving into Cambridge to buy more drugs. His car was doing well over 60 mph...the legal limit of 60 mph was not to blame in either case.

WHITE_P

Simple really, we as motorists are to blame for what happens on the roads, so it is our fault that people are killed in road accidents, thus the government etc. can not be blamed.

However they can be blamed for the shambles our health service is in, therefore they don't want this making national news.

It also makes it easier from them to waste more of our Tax money on policing our roads to increase revenue from fines, if we are stupid enough to believe its our fault in the first place (see above).

mike65

The slavish reporting on deaths on NI does pish me off as it helps distort the falling fatality rate in this state.

Mike.

Rovi

mike65 wrote: »

The slavish reporting on deaths on NI does pish me off as it helps distort the falling fatality rate in this state.

Mike.

Indeed; news reports often start off with "X people died on Irish roads this weekend" and we're later told that 1/2*X were in Northern Ireland.
Politics and national aspirations aside, it's grossly distorting the perceived situation in this jurisdiction.

That, and cars that "loose control" :rolleyes:

Our man in Havana

In the USA they never report road fatalities on the news, come to that a murder would not make the news in most states.

The media here are obsessed with them here to the extent that they harass the Gardaí to get the names and other personal details of the deceased. I had a family member die in a RTC nearly 5 years ago. We decided for practical reasons not to release the name. The gardaí dealing with the case were bombarded with calls from every media outlet in the land looking for the name. In fairness they didn't release the name.

The media here just obsess so much with road deaths.

unkel

r3nu4l wrote: »

in the UK, unless there are a lot of people killed (5+) or a celebrity dies in a crash (Diana), then it's ignored for the most part and picked up by local newspapers.

That's the way it should be imho. As others, I'm annoyed by reporting of road deaths from the North. Some (badly hidden) political agenda there methinks

Robbo

mike65 wrote: »

The slavish reporting on deaths on NI does pish me off as it helps distort the falling fatality rate in this state.

Mike.

I've noticed this practice in recent years; it started with reporting fatalities from the Border counties and now pretty much all of NI. Adding in Northern road deaths brings us back over the "magical" 400 figure.

pburns

I've pointed this out before. For some reason road fatalities have become BIG news in Ireland over the last 5 years. Thing is I have yet to see definitive stats that prove we are considerably worse per-head of population than most other EU states.

RTE and in particular Charlie Bird focused on this last year and TBH it was mawkish, cloying, sentimental schlock. The low-point was when they played a slow, sad soundtrack over a rolling list of those that had perished at the end of each month! Do they still do that?

It's a sensitive subject and we have to be mindful of causing upset to those who have lost loved ones (or indeed tempting fate I suppose). But it has become an easy copy filler for the hacks.

Maybe they have more space to fill up now the Northern troubles have died down? Maybe in this increasingly satitised, PC nanny-state the sheer randomness of RTAs is simply unacceptable?

CtrlSource

Bond-007 wrote: »

In the USA they never report road fatalities on the news, come to that a murder would not make the news in most states.

The media here are obsessed with them here to the extent that they harass the Gardaí to get the names and other personal details of the deceased. I had a family member die in a RTC nearly 5 years ago. We decided for practical reasons not to release the name. The gardaí dealing with the case were bombarded with calls from every media outlet in the land looking for the name. In fairness they didn't release the name.

The media here just obsess so much with road deaths.

In 2006 alone, more than 43,000 people died as a result of road crashes in the US. It would be impractical to report even a fraction of that number on news bulletins. They still report multiple fatalities though, like pile-ups and bus crashes

Our man in Havana

They still report multiple fatalities though, like pile-ups and bus crashes

I bet they don't name each victim and give their nationality.

fricatus

I'm going to go against the grain of this thread and say it's a very good thing that we report on road deaths in this way in Ireland. While the toll is falling, it's still way too high, and there's loads that can still be done. Part of that is driver awareness.

If we're thinking about the possibility of dying or killing someone else on the roads, then we'll think twice about our actions. Likewise, dangerous alignments on roads, inappropriate speed limits (80 kph on country lanes...) and bad signage become an issue for government. Witness how the NRA have retrofitted dual carriageways and motorways after a crash where a car crossed onto the opposite carriageway of the M1 near Drogheda.

If road safety becomes a focus area, action will be taken and lives will be saved. The next bit of understanding that needs to be got across is that safety equipment in cars should not be skimped on. The government could start by waiving VAT and VRT on safety kit in new cars.

Someone mentioned above that 43,000 people die on US roads every year. About 2,900 died in 9/11, yet which area got the most focus and the most funding? Maybe if they spent all that Homeland Security money and the billions wasted on invading Iraq and looking for Osama, they'd save considerably more than 3,000 lives a year on their roads.

Our man in Havana

Is it really nessasary to name the deceased?

Anan1

Bond-007 wrote: »

Is it really nessasary to name the deceased?

I don't really think so, in most circumstances. I would like to see more detail on the actual circumstances of accidents, although I suppose it will always be hard to reconcile the interests of the public with the feelings of the bereaved.

peasant

Bond-007 wrote: »

Is it really nessasary to name the deceased?

But isn't that somehow part of Irish culture? Sort of like the reading of the death notices on the radio? (Another thing that, as a foreigner, I don't quite "get")

Our man in Havana

peasant wrote: »

But isn't that somehow part of Irish culture? Sort of like the reading of the death notices on the radio? (Another thing that, as a foreigner, I don't quite "get")

I as an Irish person don't get either. It is all rather macabre. It is a serious revenue stream for the radio stations.

All I can tell you from personal experience, the media are relentless in their search for the identities the victims of RTCs.

Quint

Gurgle wrote: »

As biko said, its news and it could happen to any of us, any day.

Add to that the fact that every single death on the roads is a direct result of somebody doing something stupid. What annoys me is how they are reported; "Two people were killed when the car they were travelling in left the road and struck a tree..."

wtf?
the car was on autopilot?

I hate that too, "the car left the road"! Did you notice cars usually "leave the road" between 2-5am in rural areas?

Zube

Quint wrote: »

Did you notice cars usually "leave the road" between 2-5am in rural areas?

That's why it's so important to have speedtraps on straight urban dual carriageways between 9 and 5 on days when it's not raining. Speed kills!

Biro

I think that was part of the campagin a few years ago. The RSA wanted the media to report on all of them so that we didn't become complacant and treat it like "ah sure 450 people die every year on roads, who cares?". It keeps it to the forefront of people's minds.
I've no problem with it to be honest. I do have a problem with radio stations discussing big brother and the like.
Also, saying "the car left the road" is all they can say. They can't say "the driver couldn't take the speed he was doing" or "the car was neglected and broke so crashed" because they don't know exactly happened. All you can say for sure is that the car left the road and the person(s) in it died. Anything else is speculating or opinion forming.

Mr. Presentable

Having read the thread to here I can see many things I agree with.

1 Reporting fatalities from the North. Surely a ploy to make the figures look worse and scare us all.

2 Naming the deceased is unnecessary

3 Loss of control as cause of accident - see 4

4 We need to be told what the condition (drunk, drugged, underage, learner, no seatbelt, moblie phone etc) of the deceased and or driver was at the time of the accident. One particularly horrific incident in recent months had two small children killed where the car was only moderately damaged. Had they their belts/were they in child seats? Information like this might wake some people up

r3nu4l

fricatus wrote: »

While the toll is falling, it's still way too high, and there's loads that can still be done. Part of that is driver awareness.

Ah yes driver awareness is as much of a factor and imo, possibly more important a factor than speed in many road deaths. The two factors are almost certainly linked in the majority of cases.

So why do all public information films and campaigns focus solely on speed? Apart from the occasional "Think Bike!" ad that calls for awareness of motorbikes there is feck all time given to promoting driver awareness anymore. It's all speed, speed, speed!

If you are unaware of a bend in the road ahead then you can leave the road, hit a tree and die in a crash at 80-100 km/h, despite being under the speed limit. Speed wasn't the factor, unawareness was.

The same with being unaware that the van at the crossroads ahead is pulling out because you are too busy adjusting your stereo or looking at the bit of skirt on the path beside you. You see it too late, brake, swerve, hit a lamppost, railing and die. Speed may not have been the factor but lack of awareness was.

In my view, both need to be tackled. Many pile ups aren't caused by breaking the speed limit, they are caused by driving too fast or too close to the car in front or by being unaware that the guy in the lane beside you is going to pull out or the guy four cars ahead has just jammed on his brakes to avoid hitting the badger on the road.

Road fatalities reporting needs to be improved. How about at the end of the year the papers report on determined causes of road fatalities and the type of road they occurred on. Speeding is not the only cause of road deaths in Ireland.

Owen

You won't hear the news explaining exactly how the accidents occurred at the time of the report, as it takes accident investigators a while to fully comprehend difficult situations like that, and it wouldn't be in anyone's interest to speculate, even if the cause does seem blatantly obvious.

r3nu4l

ned78 wrote: »

You won't hear the news explaining exactly how the accidents occurred at the time of the report, as it takes accident investigators a while to fully comprehend difficult situations like that, and it wouldn't be in anyone's interest to speculate, even if the cause does seem blatantly obvious.

You obviously missed what I said...

r3nu4l wrote: »

How about at the end of the year the papers report on determined causes of road fatalities and the type of road they occurred on.

In other words, Towards December the papers do a special on Road deaths, detailing the number of deaths, the number for which causes have been determined (alcohol, drugs, speeding, ice etc) and break them down into these categories. They could also say where multiple factors were considered to have contributed to the death. Then by saying what roads these deaths occurred on, the time of daya nd weather conditions we could finally have a clear picture of where speed traps and accident reduction strategies need to be employed.

This would be very useful approaching Christmas where the propensity for drink driving is increased.

Zube

r3nu4l wrote: »

Then by saying what roads these deaths occurred on, the time of daya nd weather conditions we could finally have a clear picture of where speed traps and accident reduction strategies need to be employed.

That's exactly why they don't do this: the current speedtrap efforts are a complete and total waste, doing nothing but pull in some cash and annoy motorists. If they produced real data, this would be obvious, and they'd have to do something different.

Quint

Yeah, the garda stats on their website are useless. IT just tells you how many people were killed each year. A bit more detail would be nice

Owen

r3nu4l wrote: »

You obviously missed what I said...

My post wasn't directly at you specifically, rather at the other posters requesting we hear what happens at accidents to wake us up as drivers. Apologies if it seemed that way, I agree with what you're saying!

It BeeMee

r3nu4l wrote: »

You obviously missed what I said...


In other words, Towards December the papers do a special on Road deaths, detailing the number of deaths, the number for which causes have been determined (alcohol, drugs, speeding, ice etc) and break them down into these categories. They could also say where multiple factors were considered to have contributed to the death. Then by saying what roads these deaths occurred on, the time of daya nd weather conditions we could finally have a clear picture of where speed traps and accident reduction strategies need to be employed.

This would be very useful approaching Christmas where the propensity for drink driving is increased.

The RSA do publish those statistics, just a couple of years later. The latest available on their website is 2006

Thing is, you have to go look for these, they're not in-your-face like the accidents themselves at the time.

As regards the reporting in the media: I personally have no problem with it, although I do agree it's overblown at times. If more than one person dies, it's suddenly "carnage" everywhere.

Ireland is such a small country a lot of people will know of the stretch of road in question where the accident happened. If it's a stretch you use regularly, it may teach you to be that little bit more careful the next time you're driving it.

Zube

It BeeMee wrote: »

The RSA do publish those statistics, just a couple of years later. The latest available on their website is 2006

The RSA lumps drinking, speeding, sleeping, being on the phone and so on all into one cause of accidents: drivers contribution. I'd like to see the breakdown: how many drivers, especially in single vehicle accidents, are drunk at the time.

r3nu4l

It BeeMee wrote: »

The RSA do publish those statistics, just a couple of years later.

It does make interesting reading but as zube says, it's also very vague in certain areas. I have a feeling that this is deliberate and that if we had the raw data to look at ourselves we'd see a different picture emerging. Thanks though, it's informative to a point.

Gurgle

Zube wrote: »

I'd like to see the breakdown: how many drivers, especially in single vehicle accidents, are drunk at the time.

I want more detail than that:

How many were over the legal limit?
How much over the limit?

Without a detailed report including those statistics, how can our wonderfull DoE possibly make sensible decisions on drink-drive limits?

Likewise with speed limits: The limit on over 90% of the country's roads was reduced a couple of years ago, without any data published on the number of crashes that occur at speeds between 50 and 60 mph.

It BeeMee wrote:

Ireland is such a small country a lot of people will know of the stretch of road in question where the accident happened. If it's a stretch you use regularly, it may teach you to be that little bit more careful the next time you're driving it.

Or it may teach you not to drive there at 80mph when you're hammered.
In fact, it teaches us nothing because we never learn the actual causes of accidents.

Slig

r3nu4l wrote: »

It does make interesting reading but as zube says, it's also very vague in certain areas. I have a feeling that this is deliberate and that if we had the raw data to look at ourselves we'd see a different picture emerging. Thanks though, it's informative to a point.

I agree, we all hear ststistics about how many people were charged for using their phone while driving but if we started hearing on the radio or tv that 2 people died in a single car crash because the driver was on the phone then it might make a difference.

Joseph Kuhr

Slig wrote: »

I agree, we all hear ststistics about how many people were charged for using their phone while driving but if we started hearing on the radio or tv that 2 people died in a single car crash because the driver was on the phone then it might make a difference.

You do. Its just probably quite rare and not something they investigage unless there is something to suggest it. It was in the news recently about a woman who went to prison because her phone records showed that she sent a text just before she caused a fatal accident.