If it’s true that a picture paints a thousand words - and here in the cybergarage we tend to agree - then the picture at the top of this story should make road safety authorities sit up and take note.
Car Insurance South Africa has launched an interactive visualisation of the historical car crash statistics for South Africa for the period 1950-2000, drawn up from data supplied by Arrive Alive SA. The graphics allow users to manipulate data along X and Y-axes as well as the radius to form plotted points on the visualisation. The user can then create any one of 56 unique scenarios of data.
HOW IT WORKS
The X-axis controls two sets of data, namely the year (from 1950-2000) and the total SA population which ranges from 11.7 million in 1950 to 43.8 million in 2000. The Y-axis contains the vehicle population, the SA population (once again), fatal crashes, major crashes, minor crashes, damage only and the total crashes.
The radius (or Z-axis) controls the human injury statistics, including persons killed, serious injuries, slight injuries and total injuries. Users can hover over the plot points to get the exact figures and there are also social media-sharing buttons and place for comments, making this visualisation even more interactive.
GENERAL TREND
While the data brings up some interesting points, the general trend is that the greater the population, and thus the greater the number of vehicles on the roads, the greater the deaths and injuries over the years. This forms a linear pattern - which shows that although the cars and roads have improved (especially in terms of safety) the average person’s driving skills have not.
The improvements in safety of the average car are also offset by the amount of traffic as well as the slight increase of the speeds of the cars over the years.
This is a sobering realisation that no matter how safe our cars are - along with the combined efforts of the traffic departments to provide safe roads and enforce slower driving speeds - more and more people are still dying on our roads each year, due to the one thing government cannot legislate - the human factor.