See below..
The BBC item is taken from today's DfT report "Contributory factors to road accidents" (I'll dig the URL out for it if anyone want to read it, it's only 16 pages).
However, the BBC reporters, like most innumerate hack journalists, never look further than the "executive summary" of any of these reports... What the DfT's people have done there is to agregate the figures for "Exceeding the speed limit" with "Going too fast for the conditions" (ie *not* exceeding the limit but still going inappropriately quickly) and called it "excessive speed" - which is not one of the data items in the report.
The actual figures are:-
"Exceeding the speed limit" - 5% of all accidents, 12% of banes. "Going too fast for the conditions" - 12% of all accidents, 17% of banes.
Reading the report would be funny if it wasn't so serious... They consistantly appear to be doing their best to "big up" the contribution of speed to accidents, as one gets the feeling that the results weren't *quite* what they wanted them to be. BTW, the biggest contributor was "Not looking where you're bloody well going" (my paraphrase) which chipped in at 32% of all accidents.
I'd like to see what proportion of the "exceeding the speed limit" group were also drunk, on drugs, driving stolen cars, being chased by the police, etc.. - but it's not analysed out in the report...
-- and don't bother with ralf4, it's a spamtrap and I never go there.. :)
... There's pleasure sure in being mad That none but madmen know... Dryden
