Driving too fast kills three times as many people as knife crime. This is being highlighted by a national charity for road crash victims in the week before World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims on Sunday, 16 November.
Each year, nearly a thousand people in the UK die in crashes related to speeding according to the Department for Transport (DfT), while 258 stabbing deaths were recorded for 2006/7 by the Home Office.
“The DfT says speed is involved in over 850 deaths each year,” Amy Aeron-Thomas, Executive Director of RoadPeace, comments. “This is a conservative figure as, in many cases, police are unable to estimate speed.”
In February this year The Home Office released the “Violent Crime Action Plan”. It is the first project to focus on crimes involving serious violence. It sets out how the government, police and local agencies intend to cut homicide, knife-, gun- and gang-related crime and sexual and domestic violence.
“The Government catagorise violent crime into physical, financial and emotional distress,” says, Aeron-Thomas. “As such, speeding should be included as a violent crime.”
Most road crashes are called accidents. Though most are not premeditated, this confuses how we look at the consequences.
Aeron-Thomas continues, “In April 2006 the Home Office introduced the Code for Victims. The draft Code excluded all crash victims, except those where the crash was intended (which is virtually never). After much campaigning by RoadPeace members, the Code was amended to include those bereaved in crashes where the driver was to be charged with either an indictable offence or careless driving.
“The most common and most deadly motoring offences are not classified as notifiable crime and are thus not monitored in recorded crime statistics. Speeding, careless driving, and drink driving are not included in these key crime indicators.”
In December 2007, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies published ’Knife Crime’ : a review of evidence and policy. “It must…be remembered that ‘knife crime’ will not necessarily result in a physically harmed victim,” it states, “although it may cause significant distress to the victim.
“Sensational statements increase public fear of crime,” the review says. “Some newspaper articles have cited figures from the Youth Justice Board’s annual Youth Survey, conducted by the market research group MORI, on the percentage of young people who have carried a knife in the year before questioning without also stating that such knife carrying may only have occurred once and that most of those school pupils carried nothing more than a penknife, which is usually legal.
“Such inaccuracies are not confined to the press. The Metropolitan Police Service, in
publicising the national knife amnesty in 2006, released a statement that ‘52 teenagers are victims of knife crime EVERY week in London’. What does ‘knife crime’ mean in that sentence? It is easy to infer from such a statement that each of those 52 incidents of ‘knife crime’ involves a stabbing.”
Misrepresentation has heightened knife crime but has diminished the scale of suffering due to road crashes. A study in Road Accidents Great Britain 1996 estimated only half the number of people seriously injured in crashes was recorded by news media.
“Despite over four times as many people being killed in crashes than by homicide,” Aeron-Thomas says, “road crash victims are not included under Victim Support’s mandate.” Victim Support is the independent charity that helps people cope with the effects of crime.
The RoadPeace news release for World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic says, “While the UK has recently reported it’s lowest ever number of road deaths recorded (2,943) for 2007, there is little to celebrate. Over 3500 people are killed in crashes around the world each day and this is set to increase.
”Between 2005 and 2030, road deaths are predicted to rise by over 60% worldwide.”
The first Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims was in 1993. It was organised by RoadPeace in the UK. Since then it has been observed and promoted worldwide.
On 26 October 2005, the United Nations endorsed it as a global day to be observed every third Sunday in November each year.
Bob Russell, MP for Colchester, has tabled an Early Day Motion welcoming the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.
RoadPeace has written to the Prime Minister asking him to endorse the Day.
