Individual risk and population risk
The Herald and Stuff both have a story about the most dangerous intersections in the country, based on the Ministry of Transport press release. The Herald continues its encouraging new policy of providing the actual data, so we can look in more detail.
The first thing to note is that no intersection in the country appears to have had more than two fatal crashes in ten years, which is better than I would have expected. That’s why crashes involving even minor injuries need to be included in the ranking.
The second issue is the word ‘dangerous’. These 100 intersections are the ones that most need something done to them; they are where the most crashes happen. That’s not the same as the usual use of ‘most dangerous’ — these aren’t the intersections that pose the greatest risk to someone driving through them. The list is from a population or public health viewpoint: these intersections are more dangerous in the same way that dogs are more dangerous than sharks, or flu is more dangerous than meningitis.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Dogs to sharks? Wouldn’t it be more like Dobermann to Begale? To make this list the road has to be driven on by at least one car in the period.
I passed a lot of dogs but never swam in the sea so there is a bit more overlap than that to the dangerousness of these roads compared to a hypothetically lethal road that never sees any traffic? What am I missing here?
11 years ago