Understanding the problem
It ’ s really important to understand the issue ( s ) affecting your communities before being able to provide a targeted and effective approach to those issues . This involves understanding whether the issue is with a particular group of people , for example , with ‘ young drivers ’, ‘ repeat offenders ’, ‘ people who drive for work ’ or ‘ males ’, or if it ’ s at a particular time , on particular days , or at particular locations . Different problems will require different tactics so tailoring what we do to what we want to influence is crucial .
But ‘ understanding the problem ’ also , crucially , means understanding whether you actually do have the problem you think you do . Sometimes we might believe that a certain behaviour is responsible for our statistics , but it might not be . For example , the issue of mobile phone use often gets talked about in the same breath as ‘ distracted driving ’ - but the two are not the same thing .
Distracted driving can include all sorts of activities such as eating at the wheel , talking to ( or being talked to by ) passengers . If your issue is one of these , and not mobile phone use , then efforts to target phone use won ’ t get us the results we want .
Sometimes the way statistics are recorded is unhelpful as it can mean that a variety of different behaviours are clumped together under a single heading . With limited time and resources , we need to make sure that we are focusing on exactly the behaviour that is causing harm . In this section we also give some sources of potential information to help guide our activity , and some caveats for where we need to be cautious and ask questions about that data .
Where to find data
There are a number of places that you may be able to look for data to identify the problem and any particular group of interest within that problem ¹. You should start by looking within your own organisation - whether that is a police force , local authority , or road safety partnership - as you may find that the information you are looking for is available for you there .
If you think the data you want exists already , but is being held by someone who won ’ t share it , try going higher up in their organisation to someone who will know if sharing is possible and who can approve it being shared with you . People can be nervous about sharing data , but if it ’ s anonymous and high level ( and that ’ s all we need ) then there ’ s not usually any reason not to share it , so don ’ t be put off by being told no ‘ because of GDPR and all that ’. GDPR may not be relevant to the kind of data you are asking for !
Local police forces collect personal-injury road traffic accident data ( known as ‘ STATS19 ’) and this may be particularly useful ( if you can get access to it ). This data also feeds into many of the other data sources that you may find . There are limitations , though as the role of mobile phone use in a crash may not always be identified and ( of course ) near misses and minor bumps won ’ t get recorded at all .
¹ RoSPA ( 2017 ). Designing evidence based road safety interventions . Available from : https :// www . rospa . com / rospaweb / docs / advice-services / road-safety / practitioners / evidence-based-intervention-guide . pdf
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