Those Dangerous Roads

In the Barossa Valley there has been a lot of press about an intersection where two traffic incidents occurred within a matter of weeks. As I understand it, nobody was killed, but injuries occurred. 

The intersection has a lot of heavy truck traffic and was controlled by stop signs. The local council, in its wisdom, replaced the stop signs with give-way signs. This was considered to be an error that was increasing the danger within the intersection. After much public reaction, the council was pressured by public opinion to remove the give-way signs and replace them again with stop signs.

Numerous people said the intersection was "dangerous" and that stop signs would prevent crashes from occurring. Good luck with that.

One thing I discovered during 12 years of police service, four of which were spent full-time investigating traffic incidents where fatalities or evidence of dangerous driving occurred, is that it doesn't matter how straight, how good a surface, how many signs or road markings there are on a road, drivers will still manage to crash.

The cause of 99%* of traffic incidents is drivers. Let me say that again; drivers cause crashes. Not roads. Not signs.

There are people who wilfully disobey stop signs and give-way signs in the same way there are people who use mobile phones while driving (inattention), and consume drugs or alcohol before driving. There are also people who have a propensity to collide.

If drivers disobey give-way signs and can't manage to avoid traffic travelling on an interesection road, why would we expect drivers not to disobey stop signs? In fact, everywhere I drive, I see people who don't stop at stop signs.

According to the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (Australian Standard 1742) stop signs are used when there is a visibility problem or other feature that requires a driver to stop.

I've attended dozens of traffic incidents (mostly fatalities) where people have failed to stop.

I hope the so-called dangerous intersection doesn't have any more crashes, but I know where I'd place my bet.

Robin

* I'll discuss a fatality I attended that was brought about by mechanical failure next post and two where people weren't wearing seat belts that probably prevented them from dying.

Lending a Hand - Traffic Accident

For a little over four years, I worked with the Traffic Accident Investigation Squad that covered the larger Brisbane Metropolitan area. Our role was only to attend fatal traffic incidents and those where dangerous driving or criminal negligence was concerned.

It was a tough job spending our working days watching people kill each other or themselves on our roads. It was especially difficult when victims were young children and those whose deaths were preventable had an iota of common sense prevailed.

While working, we didn't have time to think about the deceased and broken. We had to do the work measuring the road, drawing a map, photographing the vehicles and interviewing witnesses. 

Afterwards, the reality that someone's life had ended and that their loved ones would be heartbroken and never see them again would come into our thoughts. It was a policing task wherein we were dealing with largely lovely people (the families) and not the usual misfits we'd deal with in other areas of policing. The criminals, wife bashers, sex offenders.

All of us in the section drank too much and sometimes we used humour to get us through the day as shown in this photograph of a very old Holden sedan in which a young person was killed. He let his expectations exceed his ability when cornering and rolled the vehicle. I took numerous photos of the scene, but this one attracted my attention. I thought there was a certain irony in it.

We worked in teams of two and one week we had a young police cadet assigned to us for training. I guess he would have been 16-17 years old and keen about getting experience in traffic accident investigation.

My colleague and I were on a 7 am to 3 pm shift and just after 8 am we received a call from Police Operations that a fatal had occurred. The boss asked us to take the cadet with us, which we did.

We hopped into our F100 Ford truck commonly known as the "Death Mobile" and headed to the scene. A couple of local police was in attendance directing traffic around the scene and it appeared that a guy on a motorcycle had overtaken and hadn't seen (or perhaps thought he could beat) a cement truck coming the opposite way.

Unfortunately for him, he had hit the side of the truck and the scoop had taken off his right arm and some part of the truck had smacked into the right side of his helmet.

The body was lying on the roadway with what was left of his helmet intact and he obviously had a missing arm. 

While I asked the cadet to hold the end of a tape measure, my colleague walked up and down the road looking for the arm. After he found it, he covered it with a piece of rag and came over to us and said to the cadet, "Can I give you a hand?" and passed the limb to the cadet.

He almost passed out. After telling us it wasn't funny and calling my colleague a ghoul, he did what we asked and placed the arm with the body which by now had been covered. He was visibly shaken for a while as he hadn't seen a dead body before, let alone one with bloodied injuries and an arm savagely pulled from its socket. My colleague and I thought it was a great joked but after a short laugh, got back to work.

After we had finished up at the scene, on the trip back to the office, we talked to him about how it was necessary to have some diversion strategies, including humour to survive.

We made sure he helped follow up with several witness interviews, and attended the autopsy of the deceased.

When he left our office and returned to the Police Academy, he assured us he had gained a lot from us and appreciated the experience.

Another day of policing.

Robin