Road Accidents -v- traffic levels

Victor

I took the data from here (green line) and compared it to an average of injury accidents over the last few years (red line).

Interesting similarity.

antoinolachtnai

I've missed something here, what exactly are the axes, and which numbers correspond to which lines?

Antoin.

Victor

Sorry, its a bit sloppy.

X-axis is time of day.

Y axis is volume of traffic (based on a sample from the M50 junctions) and number of injury accidents (from NRA Road Accident Facts). It is a matter of proportions rather than absolute figures

astec123

Its pretty logical whats happening there, more items more probability. 10 marbles in the bag half are black, you have a 50:50 chance of black 100 in the bag half again are black same thing 50:50 its basically the laws of probability and exactly what you would expect, do the same for air accidents and get a similar result, same with boating, swimming, and 100s of other activities.

Borzoi

astec123 wrote:

Its pretty logical whats happening there, more items more probability.

Yep - looks like a blinding flash of the obvious. Though to be honest I thought there would be more of an exponential rise in the chance of an accident.

eg: 100 cars - chance of accident: 1%
1000 cars - chance of accident: 100%

But it appears to be fairly linear relationship

antoinolachtnai

I think the conclusion I would draw from it would be that congestion doesn't cause serious accidents.

You would think that there would be more chance of running into something or someone when there are more cars on the road. I suspect that people slow down more at the peaks.

The number for the green line in the morning looks a little suspicious to me. Maybe this is just something specific to do with the M50 junctions? I have a feeling that drivers use the M50 differently from the way they use local roads, where most accidents happen.

I must say that I'm surprised that the overnight accident rate is so low.

luckat

Am I reading the same graph? As far as I can see (if I'm understanding the graph), if you go out on your bike or in your car at lunch hour or the *evening* rush hour, you're likely to become bolognese, whereas you're safe enough at two in the morning (or, strangely, in the morning rush hour).

antoinolachtnai

Well, yes, but that's just because there are more vehicles on the road. It's not because of congestion.

It's a subtle difference.

Think of it this way. The number of accidents per million journeys appears to stay fairly flat all day (even though the absolute number of accidents per hour fluctuates considerably).

To be fair, the chances of becoming bolognese on a single journey are very low, no matter what time you make the journey.

Zaph0d

I had thought that the rates were higher at night due to drunk driving. Do some insurance companies not offer special deals if you agree not to drive at night?

seamus

Zaph0d wrote:

I had thought that the rates were higher at night due to drunk driving. Do some insurance companies not offer special deals if you agree not to drive at night?

The severity of the accidents, and amounts of deaths are higher at night (more correctly, they're disproportionate to the amount of traffic on the road). The highest number of accidents and injuries on the roads still occur at peak times - rush hours in the morning and evening. As would be expected.

Zaph0d

So the highest hourly total for fatalities rather than accidents in Ireland is midnight to 1am. The next two hours are pretty high also. We have by far the highest night time road fatality rate in the EU, presumably because we are the most prone to drunk driving and have no legislative backup for random breath testing.

Thanks to Michael McDowell for all the good work you've been doing, thinking and talking about this legislation over the past few years.

sources:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/care/studies/doc/safetynet/SN-1-3-ALL-ASR-122004.pdf
http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/care/studies/doc/safetynet/SN-TRL-1-3-BFS-Car_occupants_022005.pdf

Bee

Zaph0d wrote:

So the highest hourly total for fatalities rather than accidents in Ireland is midnight to 1am. The next two hours are pretty high also. We have by far the highest night time road fatality rate in the EU, presumably because we are the most prone to drunk driving and have no legislative backup for random breath testing.

Thanks to Michael McDowell for all the good work you've been doing, thinking and talking about this legislation over the past few years.

Not to mention the useless Gardai hiding behind bus stops and under the bridge at Stillorgan and on other safe motorways raising revenue for the Gov whilst having feck all affect on road safety.

Bee

the time I see a Garda car parked outside of a Pub I will believe they might actually be doing something positive