Comment & Analysis: The Business Post newspaper is becoming perhaps the most anti-science publication in Ireland in terms of its climate and transport coverage. However, Anton Savage’s column this week was so anti-evidence that I have to wonder: Is it propaganda for a client?
Savage is a broadcaster and columnist, but he is still a director of the Communications Clinic, a high-profile PR firm. You might be mistaken for thinking his paid communications work has taken a back seat, but in recent years, he’s reportedly been actively working for clients, with the Phoenix describing him as “the Communications Clinic public relations manipulator”.
His article on Sunday used communication techniques designed to muddy the waters on important issues.
There will be a fair few people involved in road safety who will be stunned or in stitches after reading his claim that: “No-one in the road safety business has ever been criticised for recommending lower speed limits.”
After reporting on different speed limit reviews for over a decade, I can safely say that such a line is so far from the truth that it’s comical. But most readers will be unaware of this or will just gloss over it.
He further added: “It feels safer, scratches the itch of being seen to do something, and is relatively simple to implement. Unfortunately, it won’t do much to address the actual problem.” But this is pure spin; the fact is that there’s loads of evidence that lower speed limits can reduce deaths and injuries.
In addition to the research showing that lower speeds are linked to safer roads, the controversial application of 20mph on Welsh urban roads seemed to have had a large effect, according to recently released data. Ten fewer people were killed on Welsh roads in the first 12 months of the change, while the number of people injured declined by 28%.
Commenting, Gwenda Owen, head of charity Cycling UK in Wales, said: “Having looked at road safety stats for over 10 years, I can confidently say this is the single most significant and positive change we’ve ever seen in any nation in the UK.”
But Savage doesn’t see the safety benefits of lower speeds. He wrote that “the old saying that if all you have is a hammer the world looks like a nail” applies to the Speed Limit Review, which is the review process that has resulted in the plan for lower speed limits on some roads.
But this is classic defection.
This isn’t the problem. Look over there: That’s the problem.
Ireland has signed up to Vision Zero, and the Safe System approach, which accepts that road safety is not going to be solved by any single action. Culture, training, enforcement, phone use and other distracted driving, drunk/drug driving, tiredness, road design, vehicle design, and speed are all interlinked issues.
In further building his case of deflection, Savage wrote: “Nearly 40 per cent of drivers killed on our roads, according to the RSA’s longitudinal data, have been drinking.”
If not even a single driver impaired by alcohol could be helped by lower speeds, that would still mean that Road Safety Authority (RSA) data shows that 60% of fatal collisions are not related to drunk driving.
“But tackling drink and male-risk taking is hard. Changing speed limits is easy, and lucrative,” says Savage.
He says women manage just fine with the current speed limit, but Savage is trying to detach “male-risk taking” from speeding when a huge part of risk-taking on our road is speeding, both speeding and inappropriate speed.
An easy answer as to why (most) apparently women fare better when it comes to the current system of speed limits is that a larger percentage of them don’t act like idiots and drive to conditions.
The article also contains a victim complex regarding law-breaking, including the claims that “more motorists will be caught travelling at what used to be a legal speed. And fined accordingly,” and that speed enforcement is “lucrative.”
It’s simple: Even if you disagree with the law, you won’t get fined if you obey it.
While his article contains many evidence-free arguments, Savage takes a darker path by relying on the RSA’s past mistakes.
He claims: “According to the RSA, in the vast majority of pedestrian deaths the pedestrian is culpable – not wearing hi-vis, stepping into traffic not looking, lying in the street and… being drunk (most pedestrians killed on our streets have been drinking). Those are difficult problems to solve.”
This contains disinformation, but it’s important to look at who’s culpable.
In law, there is usually a level of dual culpability, which is especially clear when it comes to insurance cases. That can range from one side being something like 80% responsible to just being slightly over a majority responsible. Culpability tends to be rightly weighted towards the person controlling the power vehicle.
Culpability here, in fairness, mainly belongs to the RSA and not Savage.
As IrishCycle.com reported back in 2017, the claim that 66% or two-thirds of pedestrians killed on Irish roads had alcohol in their systems was concocted by the RSA by excluding a large number of deaths where the dead person’s alcohol levels were not recorded.
In the timeframe used to gather the 66% stat, only 21% of pedestrians killed were tested — as the Irish Road Victims Association pointed out at the time, this is mainly because there’s no reason to suspect many people, including children, have taken alcohol before they were run over.
It is a bonkers abuse of statistics to exclude those not tested and then apply the percentage figure to the overall number of pedestrians. Over the years, the RSA has been responsible for many issues but has refused to accept that anything is wrong, and now the lie lives on.
Savage then turns his focus to the 30km/h zone in Dublin. He said: “The report also recommends further rollouts of the 30km city centre zones introduced in 2013. That year there were 188 deaths. Ten years later it was 181. In other words, there is zero evidence in the numbers that any lives have been saved by reducing city traffic to the speeds horses used to travel at.”
There are four problems with the above — there was no major rollout of “30km city centre zones” in 2013; why would you use national-level deaths to look at city centres? (unlike Wales’ 20m/h zones, Ireland’s 30km’s zones are still somewhat limited); why would you look at deaths alone?; and horses used for transport didn’t generally canter around at around 30km/h.
Savage might as well be one of the Facebook commenters saying they can walk faster than 30km/h.
Vision Zero — which is a part of Ireland’s road safety policy — is described as “a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.” People like Savage continuously distract from those goals and claim there are only downsides.
He says the Speed Limit Review is “certain on few things, although one sticks out: ‘all scenarios considered would increase journey times for road users.'” and he adds: “Great. Uncertain, undefined, unknown benefits – guaranteed downsides.”
There’s some good news for people worried about their journey times. A study of traffic patterns in Switzerland found that 30 km/h limits “allowed the road system to accommodate cars more efficiently, resulting in faster overall travel times.”
Of course, that requires enforcement and engineering solutions to get the speed of motorists down to close to 30km/h — such measures are lacking in many current 30km/h zones, and that’s why just applying a more appropriate speed limit is just a first step.
Our systems are not perfect and are not all effective at implementing change, but articles like Savage and the large volumes of news articles getting key points wrong about the changes do not help progress.