Friday 23 September 2016

Project EDWARD - not so good

On Wednesday, I was driving to work and was reminded that it was the day designated for Project EDWARD European Day Without A Road Death. This was part of a hullabaloo across the continent to reduce the unnecessary and almost all avoidable deaths that occur wherever there are roads and cars. Project EDWARD is aspirational and entirely laudable but wouldn't it be useful to have some follow-up? We all agree that road-deaths are a bad thing, so surely we'd like to see evidence that such costly and engaged ideas actually work. Did Project EDWARD have any impact on the statistics? Because, if not, the whole thing was a waste of effort and air-time.  I've checked the RSA Road Safety Authority for a post-mortem on the event and there is nothing to see here.

I had to turn to the Daily Mail to give us the dope that Der Tag results in 2 deaths on Irish roads, ironically in Donegal where Dr Gerry Lane, one of the most speaky spokemen against idiocy on the roads, works in Letterkenny Hospital. Indeed the survivor of the double-fatal crash was taken to Dr Lane's department in an ambulance. Up until 21st September, we'd had a road-death every other day, so the tally for the day is 4x the average and brings the total to 136. I don't suppose it's been a better result in Croatia or Denmark.

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