A new report from the British Medical Association (BMA) sets out to show the positive effect of integrating health into transport policy, while proposing areas for action that prioritise health for all relevant transport sectors.
Published in July 2012, the report, ‘Healthy transport = Healthy Lives’, explains that “as the UK transport environment has become increasingly complex, transport’s impact on health has become unnecessarily harmful – to the point where it is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality”.
The report is intended for transport, energy, sustainability and climate change policy makers with strategic or operational responsibility for public health and health promotion in the UK.
Identifying the car as the most significant change to travel in the UK in the last 60 years, the report considers the negative impacts it has had on health. These include: greater risk of crashes, with pedestrians and cyclists being particularly vulnerable; long-term exposure to air pollutants decreases life expectancy; increased community severance as a result of poor urban planning.
While recognising the importance of sustainable transport, including improved mental health, reduced risk of premature death, and prevention of chronic diseases, the report argues that there has been a lack of investment in walking and cycling infrastructure. It goes on to suggest that by combining active travel and public transport options, people can achieve their recommended daily physical activity levels.
The report calls on the Government to provide strong leadership to re-focus UK transport policy. It claims that the greatest health benefits would come from prioritising accessibility over mobility, reducing the demand and need to travel by car and making public transport the affordable, desirable option.
Click here to download the full report.
I understand your points, Dave. The reason crashes occur is very simple. You don’t need unwieldy analysis, stats and long winded papers. You just need to observe that most travel like the next crash waiting to happen. They don’t pay attention. Their threat perception is generally very low, they get themselves into vulnerable situations without realising it and then, when things go wrong, they don’t feel accountable for their behaviour. If (shall we say) 95% of crashes are driver error then 95% are actually avoidable. Once you make them accountable then the whole scene changes dramatically. Ask the likes of Chris Gilbert, because people like him understand better than anyone what is safe and what is unsafe road behaviour. The real problem is that the RS fraternity don’t feel that such people have much or indeed anything to contribute in the great scale of things. How wrong can they be?
Nigel Albright
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I agree Nigel. Most people seem to agree that standards of driving have gone down, yet the roads are safer than ever. In recent years the improvements occurred when the recession started (as they have done previously) but, for 12 years prior to that, we had the worst road safety improvements since the 1950s (ever since the start of speed cameras, as it happens).
In order for people to learn how to avoid crashes, they need to know why crashes occur, and we are not well served by the government. They use large amounts of our money for publicity campaigns to tell us that speeding is a major cause of crashes, rather than explaining the real causes.
The BMA appears to have used similar poor quality research to promote those and other policies.
Dave Finney – Slough
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Thanks, Dave. Quite honestly I don’t get entangled in arduous reports. One view is that I might not get the right information; another could be that too much information confuses and paralyses. Big problem is that many people (and unfortunately also many in RS in my experience) don’t realise how far one can go in developing road skills to avoid getting involved in crashes. Chris Gilbert (some 23 years an Advanced Wing Instructor at Hendon) kindly contacted me today to inform me that Keith Bamford died this morning. Very sad indeed. But Chris and I agreed that the standards of driving (and indeed also police driving generally) has gone down so much that Lord Cottenham (who invented the System) would probably turn in his grave. Getting involved in crashes is preventable but too few people nowadays understand just how preventable they really are. But that is real road safety.
Nigel Albright
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Well Nigel, for people to learn how, the authorities need to tell them why, and that is one of the failings of the BMA report. Policies need to be based on competent and honest analysis, not on choosing particular reports while ignoring others, especially when the chosen reports are of “relatively poor” quality.
Dave Finney – Slough
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… and I would go further and say, ‘If people would only learn how’.
Nigel Albright
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The best health integration with transport is not to have crashes.
Nigel Albright
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The BMJ report is extraordinarily one-sided and in many respects inaccurate – so much so that I can only wonder about the motives of its authors.
In reality the risk per mile of being killed or seriously injured is now 20 times lower than in 1950 – and in terms of dying an accidental death 400+ times per hour lower than being an in-patient in hospital.
Average expectation of life has doubled since 1900, little of which could have been achieved without motor transport – and the biggest problem social security now faces is further increases in life expecancy.
Road deaths are now a lower proportion of total deaths than ever before – including well below the numbers of 1850 when few travelled further than they could walk and others died falling into canals, out of railway carriages or off horses.
Idris Francis
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Not really Hugh.
The review the BMA cites judged the quality of speed camera reports to be “relatively poor” and that judgement is clearly accurate. I realised that the reason for the poor quality was that site-selection effects had not been excluded. I therefore set out not to “come up with a report concluding that speed limit enforcement IS (not) effective”, but simply to exclude site-selection effects and to honestly report the results.
I expected to find that speed cameras did improve safety and was surprised by the results.
To date, no errors in the data, methods, analysis or results have been found in my report and it remains the only speed camera report to have achieved this level of accuracy.
Safety engineering should not be a popularity contest where we choose the reports that we want to believe, it should follow from competent and honest analysis.
Dave Finney – Slough
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Bit arrogant isn’t it Dave? Whose to say that your report isn’t flawed? I’m sure I could come up with a report concluding that speed limit enforcement IS effective. Then someone else writes another report arguing otherwise… etc. etc. and so it goes on.
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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I have just read the first paragraphs of this report and will read the rest at a later date when I have time to do so.
That said may I put forward one idea that that comes immediately and will improve a person’s health …by walking or cycling and in one blow will reduce heavy vehicle concentrations and congestion at the most important and dangerous times of the day.
Quite simply, let’s have more kids walk to school. Most schools are within 15/20 minute walking distance and if the parents want to escort them as well so much the better.
I say this from experience during the summer holidays that there is only one tenth of the normal traffic flow at peak times, [ie 9 out of 10 vehicles] used solely for the purpose of transporting kids to and from school.
Perhaps the government could concentrate on that first.
bob craven Lancs
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This is a highly political report calling for (p16+p69) “reallocation of road space, restricting motor vehicle access, road-user charging schemes, and traffic-calming and traffic management (including area-wide 20 miles per hour speed limits)”.
While much of the politics in the report I would agree with, it’s difficult to praise a report that states (p15) “Speed cameras … an effective intervention in reducing road traffic crashes and related casualties” when my report suggests this to be false and even the report they site to support their claim states (BMJ) “The level of evidence is relatively poor …”.
The BMA have made too many potentially false conclusions in their report for the policies they promote to be likely to succeed in producing the outcome they desire.
Dave Finney – Slough
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It is a great, well reasoned report. I hope that those in government read this and see the benefits to the economy and public health of proper walking and cycling infrastructure.
Steve, Merseyside
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Super report. Essential reading for professionals and decision makers.
Pete, Liverpool
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Hurrah for the BMA – a good report that makes sensible connections. Let’s hope we can make this work in practice. A balance between motor vehicles and other means of transport, where they are feasible and viable, makes for a better and safer transport network for all users. The other important benefit in more focus on accessibility is that it will help students, people who are unemployed or on low incomes to get greater access to work opportunities that are otherwise beyond their reach.
Honor Byford, North Yorkshire
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