On 30 Sep 2006 01:13:12 -0700, David from Oz was popularly supposed to have said:
There is a strance peculiarity in that whilst the figures from the police show these drops, the figures from the Department of Health (received directly from hospitals) show the exact opposite effect.
Now, here it may be interesting to look at motivations. The police are under pressure to be seen to be reducing road accidents, (though one could argue their hands have largely been tied by the Government in this matter), whereas the Department of Health has no such target.
So, one way to reduce the number of injuries sustained is to send ALL injured parties to hospital, and to then record the injuries as "Injury Level Unknown" in the police report, since obviously the police are not medics.
Similarly given that rest can be difficult to diagnose (it obviously requires an expert to determine this fact, even where the victim's head has been completely severed at the scene 1) then once again the police report might be somewhat hazy, erring on the side of caution regarding injuries.
What I'm saying is, the police are fiddling the figures to make their statistics look good, and the Dept of Health are reporting mostly honestly, with the usual amount of bureaucratic error and stupidity.
1 A certain John Prescott has seemingly gotten through entire parliamentary sessions without the use of his brain, so one cannot be too cautious in this respect.
-- By caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, By the beans of Java do thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning, By caffeine alone do I set my mind in motion
