Thanks for writing up this very interesting report.
I notice you included this map from the WHO and was curious about the data behind it.
In particular, some of the data seems suspect for me. For example, we see the US coloured red, the worst possible score, for speeding laws. The justification for this comes from this table:
I am not an expert on US speeding regulations, but this data does not match my experience. Is it really the case that US urban speed limits range from 25mph to 80mph? Perhaps the high end occurs with motorways that go through urban areas, though that seems misleading. Typical urban roads have speed limits roughly inline with the rest of the world, and this is surely what matters for road safety.
This report correctly notes, for example, that local authorities (cities, counties, states) can set their own speed limits; I am not sure why the map gets this wrong above.
Similarly, the map you cite marks Germany in green, and credits them with a 30mph speed limit on Motorways.
I don’t know how they didn’t catch this—Germany is famous for having literally no upper speed limit on much the Autobahns, with people often legally driving over five times faster than this report claims.
These were the only two countries I checked.
I’m not sure any of your conclusions are actually directly downstream of this, so this might not matter than much for the bottom line, except in suggesting a bit more skepticism about the WHO data.
This is some great detective work, and thanks for drawing it to our attention. These two specific examples don’t affect our conclusions, but I agree with your point re. the need for more skepticism about the WHO data.
Our suggestions regarding specific countries that could benefit from policy change are very tentative (in part because we expect this WHO data to be out of date, coming from 5+ years ago). I think your comment here underlines the importance of getting country-specific context for anyone doing further research on this. We didn’t have time during our report, but I believe CE is following up on some specific examples!
Thanks for writing up this very interesting report.
I notice you included this map from the WHO and was curious about the data behind it.
In particular, some of the data seems suspect for me. For example, we see the US coloured red, the worst possible score, for speeding laws. The justification for this comes from this table:
I am not an expert on US speeding regulations, but this data does not match my experience. Is it really the case that US urban speed limits range from 25mph to 80mph? Perhaps the high end occurs with motorways that go through urban areas, though that seems misleading. Typical urban roads have speed limits roughly inline with the rest of the world, and this is surely what matters for road safety.
More significant however is that the WHO map you reference appears to mis-transcribe data from the underlying report, The Global Status Report On Road Safety 2018.
This report correctly notes, for example, that local authorities (cities, counties, states) can set their own speed limits; I am not sure why the map gets this wrong above.
Similarly, the map you cite marks Germany in green, and credits them with a 30mph speed limit on Motorways.
I don’t know how they didn’t catch this—Germany is famous for having literally no upper speed limit on much the Autobahns, with people often legally driving over five times faster than this report claims.
These were the only two countries I checked.
I’m not sure any of your conclusions are actually directly downstream of this, so this might not matter than much for the bottom line, except in suggesting a bit more skepticism about the WHO data.
This is some great detective work, and thanks for drawing it to our attention. These two specific examples don’t affect our conclusions, but I agree with your point re. the need for more skepticism about the WHO data.
Our suggestions regarding specific countries that could benefit from policy change are very tentative (in part because we expect this WHO data to be out of date, coming from 5+ years ago). I think your comment here underlines the importance of getting country-specific context for anyone doing further research on this. We didn’t have time during our report, but I believe CE is following up on some specific examples!