Thinking @adelaidethinker

I am a bit of a fan of the "Thinker in Residence" programme that is run by the South Australian Government. Well I am when it exposes the state bureaucrats and politicians to some world class "thinking" - as it sometimes does.

And that is what has happened after someone in power finally agreed to invite a road safety expert into the "thinker" programme.

Professor Fred Wegman has investigated the issues and done the homework and has published his interim report here.

And it is good. Well worth a read and with any luck it will set the scene for a much more sophisticated approach to road safety in South Australia. Time will tell if professor Wegman's effort has been worthwhile.

One amusing element of his report is the following paragraph on page 3:

Professor Wegman notes that many South Australians believe that the road safety problem is related to extreme behaviours — high levels of speeding or drink driving. While he acknowledges that such behaviours are a problem requiring continued action, he says in fact, the majority of crashes occur to ordinary people making ordinary mistakes on the road network.

Amusing because the reason that South Australian's believe this is because the main characteristics of the state's approach to road safety has been a "fear and penalty" programme that targets those twin evils - "speeding" and "drink driving".

The propaganda seems to work quite well but the impact on road safety is probably marginal. It's taken about 40 years for this particular myth to be busted.

It will be interesting to see how and if the bureaucrats and police change tack to a more subtle and sophisticated approach and how many of them get shuffled off into retirement during the process.