In total, over the four decades for which we have data (1979-2018), 147,562 fatalities have been reported to the police. Whilst it is the case that the number of reported fatalities has reduced considerably:

• In 2018, 1,784 fatalities were reported. This still feels like a substantial tragedy and many argue there is considerable potential to reduce this much further if we took the decisions (such as limiting urban speeds) to make roads safer.
• The decline in road …

Something I’ve been droning on about for a few years concerns our reluctance to use datasets that already exist.

Specifically in relation to cycling, we have a lot of data on cycling that is rarely used, and that’s without worrying about data that aren’t disseminated in a way that lets us use it. Here are some high quality UK based data sources. These come from surveys that are very expensive to conduct:

• Travel to work data (Census, 2011).
• National …

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Legislation which carries large fines usually provides a good reason for checking out the law. In this case, the driver is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive which addresses the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons. Natural persons are “real” people, unlike llegal persons which includes entities like companies. It asserts that natural persons have the right to …

In the event of a road collision involving at least one vehicle and one injury, there is a requirement in the UK to report to the police within 30 days. The data are called “STATs19” after the form on which the data are collected, and are made available as “Open Data” for anyone to analyse.

This immediately raises a number of points:

1. What is a “road” collision (do car parks, driveways, private roads count)?
2. What is an “injury”? More specifically, injury severity is coded …

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Having worked as an academic, as a Data Scientist, as a Business Intelligence Specialist as well as doing a lot of consulting I have learnt a lot about the way we use data, and the way people perceive “statistics” (whatever that word really means).

Sometimes, a problem is so straightforward it only requires technical input (data processing) and it’s solved. More often though, a lot more interpretation is needed. …