Why is not road safety treated the same way as aviation safety ?

[marty]

Licenced Aicraft Maintennance Engineer.

and about $8-$10k, 50 hrs flying for a good quality PPL.

$80-$100, no driving, for a drivers licence.

[Skyryder]

Blame...blame something,blame someone - this country is set up to appoint blame.Not just Police and officials,but by the very population! Soon as something happens our first response is to make sure we can't be implicated by blameing someone or something else.No one will ever step up to the plate and say - ''I fucked up,it's all my fault.''

Until we can change the mindset of the Nation we haven't got a hope in hell of changing policy.

So what's the alternitive. The Cave Creek inquiry springs to mind. And look how many deaths and injuries that accident caused where no one was held responsible.

Accidents are caused by human error. Not all errors can be foreseen but when they can and loss of life occurs through negligence, unsafe practices, cheap economy etc. then a prosecution should take place.

But I see your point. Unfortunately no one in their right mind is going to admit guilt if there is a chance to get themselves off.


Skyryder

[RabidTraNZiT]

Isn't there a portion of the PPL (well all Pilots licenses really) called 'human factors'? Perhaps we should look at a similar thing for road users. Anything that raises awareness of all the risks, and not just the easy-to-pigeonhole ones, has gotta be a good thing for every road user.

Marty - could you pls explain the human factors thing for us, (it was explained to me some time ago and i'm prolly a bit rusty on it). Cheers

[MacD]

Gooooood post. They are now deleting - everyone be aware. Today I find my slightly sarcy post questioning if the speed poll relate to over limit or excess for conditions (as after a 9mill advert campaign am not sure yet what sped means) has disappeared. So they are in defense mode. New need for subtlety damnit. So take care posting - be safeas or we won't "see ya there! "

The old LTSA website had a series of pages relating to accident statistics and average vehicle speeds. They defined (in a footnote) "speeding" as "excessive speed for the conditions" not "exceeding the speed limit" . I'm not sure if the new LTNZ pages have anything similar?

Actually I just found the new page:
Ministry of Transport - Speed

I suspect the line between "speeding" and "exceeding the speed limit" is far too often blurred when discussing the cause of road accidents. The emphasis on not breaking the speed limit lulls the Mabel's (TM - Ixion) of this world into thinking that as long as they are not breaking the speed limit they are "safe", no matter how badly they are driving otherwise. The converse of such a simplistic approach was seen in the "Killer" adverts of last year.

[Kickaha]

Imagine if air accidents invoked the same response as road accidents.

If road accidents could potentialy kill as many people at one time as a aviation accident they probably would

[marty]

you could do a phd on human factors, but the basis of recognising that an accident is imminent often is traced back to a manufacturing attitude or design, maintennance attitudes, pilot attitudes. a common reference in human factors is that of slices of swiss cheese. each hole represents a risk behaviour/attitude/fault. lay them on top of each other, and chances are the holes won't line up. MOST of the time they won't. the one time they do though, is when the risk is at its greatest, and the incident is most likely to happen.
http://www.aviation.unsw.edu.au/abou...isscheese.html

[Lou Girardin]

o

for the last 10 or so years every fatal car crash has been investigated as a homicide in the first instance,

This policy was introduced as a result of a seriously stuffed up Police investigation of a triple fatality in Southland. The Police blamed the driver of the car in which all three died.
A subsequent private investigation found that the investigation was inept and their conclusions were wrong. It was accepted that the driver of the other car was responsible. He was charged and convicted.
In a fit of pique, Police 'management' the said that all fatals would now be treated as homicides. Even clear cut, single vehicle accidents would result in major road closures and damn the public inconvienience.

[Skyryder]

What is the point of having a police force if they do not investigate? thats like saying we should get "independant" detectives to investigate crime??

I'm not jumping on Lou's response here but there is one hell of a difference between investigating a crime and a fatal vehicle crash. If the police treat every fatal accident as a potental homicide one could argue on that basis that they should also treat 'all' deaths as potential homicides.

TAIC is an idependant investigation unit Of the Ministry of Transport and investigate Air, Rail, and Maritime accidents. There is no reason that this unit could not investigate road and vehicle fatalities.

Personaly I believe that the role of the HP has been subverted from serving the public to one of producing the desired results of Government policy.

Skyryder

[Ixion]

,,
What is the point of having a police force if they do not ivestigate? thats like saying we should get "independant" detectives to investigate crime??

And there you state the problem. The police investigation teams approach the crash investigation on the basis that they are investigating a crime. The whole focus is on "who do we blame, who do we charge" And as soon as they have someone they can charge, their investigation is done. Civil aviation investigations ask, not "who can we blame" but "what went wrong" A very different viewpoint. The difference can be summarised by the end result . Police: "Investigation successful, some one prosecuted". CAA: "Investigation successful. Future crashes prevented"

[marty]

If the police treat every fatal accident as a potental homicide one could argue on that basis that they should also treat 'all' deaths as potential homicides.

Skyryder

unless a dr signs a cause of death certificate, every death is investigated for reporting to the coroner. it becomes obvious pretty quickly if there is foul play, and if there is any questions, the scene is frozen and the feds bought in. every SIDS death is initially treated as a homicide, even if it's not overtly done. the post mortem tells no lies.

an unexplained violent death scene (such as an MVA or gunshot) can easily take half a day to measure and record.

[Lou Girardin]

In my time at MOT I only attended two fatals that were suspicious. In the first there was a question as to whether the victime had been pushed out of a moving van. The cops had to mark and photograph every fragment of his skull over 50 metres of road. The second was a jumper from Grafton bridge. All the rest were quite clear cut.
Treating them all as homicides is overdoing it.

[scumdog]

In my time at MOT I only attended two fatals that were suspicious. In the first there was a question as to whether the victime had been pushed out of a moving van. The cops had to mark and photograph every fragment of his skull over 50 metres of road. The second was a jumper from Grafton bridge. All the rest were quite clear cut.
Treating them all as homicides is overdoing it.

Some DO need proper investigating Lou - i.e which car was in the wrong (not as clear-cut as it may seem at times), two occupants flung out, one dies (who was the driver?) and so on.
Some? yes, there may not be the same need to investigate.

Years ago there were probably a lot of fatals written-off that would have had a different outcome had they been looked into in depth.

We've got one down here, very mysterious was it accidental/suicide/homicide? not clear cut so requires thourough investigation.

[marty]

they are treated as unexplained violent deaths, which for all intents, could be a homicide. feds don't usually attend the scene, the SCO does that. interestingly, the sco is now often attending serious crime scenes to share their experience of measuring and recording large scenes. i attended 19 fatals in a month back in the 90's - before the advent of the SCO - i'd like to see a CAA type approach to that level of crashes.

the reality though, if you actually look at the CAA website and read the reports, the non-fatal reports are not really that in-depth, and if you have ever seen a fatal mva file, beleive me, it is a comprehensive document, as is a fatal aircraft report

check www.caa.govt.nz

[marty]

In my time at MOT I only attended two fatals that were suspicious. In the first there was a question as to whether the victime had been pushed out of a moving van. The cops had to mark and photograph every fragment of his skull over 50 metres of road. The second was a jumper from Grafton bridge. All the rest were quite clear cut.
Treating them all as homicides is overdoing it.

having 1st hand seen how incompetent the mot was at investigating and preventing crashes on sh1 huntly, i'm not surprised only 2 of them were considered suspicious. how many did you attend in total lou?

[Lou Girardin]

having 1st hand seen how incompetent the mot was at investigating and preventing crashes on sh1 huntly, i'm not surprised only 2 of them were considered suspicious. how many did you attend in total lou?

We didn't investigate fatals Marty, you should know that. We always called the cops in so they could notify next of kin.
I couldn't guess the number of fatals. Double figures, not triple.