Safer roads: figures turned into fiction

YOUR lead story claiming ‘our roads are three times safer than 1980s’ (Irish Examiner, July 15) is a textbook example of how accurate statistics can be twisted into nonsensical conclusions.

“Irish roads are now far safer than they were in the 1990s and before”, you quoted a National Safety Council (NSC) spokesman as saying.

The spin from the NSC is that since there is so much more traffic on our roads, and no matching increase in deaths, then Irish roads must be getting safer. The flaw in their ‘logic’ is to assume the risk in any activity is measured by the number of resulting deaths.