Land Traffic accidents

[GTP owner]

Came across this interesting piece of research while studying today..
http://www.nisu.flinders.edu.au/pubs.../injcat132.php

It shows that while the number of actual deaths on the road deaths have decreased, the number of life-threatening injuries has actually increased. I have not read the whole article yet, but it seems that the last ten years has seen no real improvements in road safety. The less deaths are now serious injuries. How much of this is due to safer/better cars, and how much is due to law enforcement? To me it indicates that despite ten years of harsher and punitive road law, we have still not really changed the number of serious crashes.

Comments?

[prydey]

there's a couple of potential answers.

cars are much safer and people that would have died 10yrs ago, are now being kept alive by safer cars, passive and active safety.

or

people are driving slower and therefore the accidents are happening at lower speeds thus reducing the number of deaths.


probably a little bit of both but i'm leaning more toward the first one.

[Ben73]

Car safety has come a long way. I'd vote for that as a major contributor.