The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson
By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS
In a typically Anglocentric piece, BBC Breakfast spend some time on speeding and road deaths with no awareness of any differences across the UK’s four nations. BBC Scotland are struggling to compete today. Here are some reasons why it’s not easy for them:
Massive reduction in road fatalities and serious injuries in last 10 years and lowest in the UK
From Road traffic accident statistics: FOI release, published today, we see a 24% fall in road fatalities, from 203 in 2014 to 155 in 2023 and, for serious injuries, a 32% fall from 2 901 in 2014 to 1 944 in 2023.
Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400443200/
The longer-term trend:
From Transport Scotland May 30th 2024 , but not making it to any front pages or to BBC Scotland:
One hundred and fifty-five people were killed in reported road collisions in Scotland in 2023, 16 fewer than in 2022. Compared to 2022, there was a fall in reported casualties of 16% for pedal cyclists.
https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/decrease-in-number-of-people-killed-on-scotland-s-roads-1/
Compared to what?
Compared to the rest of Britain, however, Scotland is the safest area overall, with 1.32 road accidents per 1,000 of the population, compared with 1.51 in Wales and 2.05 in England.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/23424294.argyll-bute-scotlands-deadliest-roads/
Injury road collisions plummet by up to a third since 2019
By Professor John Robertson OBA
From Transport Scotland – Road accidents in Scotland data: FOI release, published today, we can see that all road collisions with an injury, at all speed limits, have fallen dramatically since 2019, ignoring the Pandemic-caused dips in 2020 and 2021 when road traffic was significantly reduced.
Of particular interest, the injury collisions in the 30mph limit have fallen by 34%.
Similarly, collisions involving HGVs have fallen across all speed limits>
Critics may spot, if they read on, that injury road collisions where speed contributed to the collision have increased slightly since 2019, from 165 to 173 but remember, if there are less collisions all together, that proportion will inevitably increase.
Most of these FoIs are requested by the likes of Alex Cole-Hamilton of the Lib Dumbs, so it will be interesting to see if and how they try to spin this.
Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400443231/
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Even compared to Scotland. We are only told in news bulletins about another fatality on Scotland’s dangerous, badly in need of upgrading, roads. We don’t get told about any reductions in road deaths.
Such is the calibre of BBC or ITV news. They have nothing good to say about our country or, even if the do dish out a rare compliment, it’s swiftly followed by a “but”.
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