1. What the data won’t tell you
Joining the Dots
Nicola Wass - So-Mo
Tanya Fosdick – Road Safety Analysis
Liverpool Adult Pedestrian Casualties 2019

2. As seen in Who we’ve helped
We work with psychologists, analysts and road safety experts to understand why people are behaving in ways which potentially make them and others worse off.
We use the insights we gain to design interventions which help people make better choices for themselves and society as a whole.
Who we’ve helped
As seen in

3. What are we going to talk about?
Limitations encountered with the standard approach to diagnosing road safety problems
What we do differently, illustrated by a live project example
How this approach can benefit you

4. @nicolawass1 @so_mo_co @mastonline
The issue with the standard approach
Road safety teams base their interventions on analysis of available data and secondary research
Whilst data analysis can tell you the what, where, when, who and how of a problem, it can only provide clues as to the why
Interventions that stop here seldom identify the actual source of the problem
This is akin to treating the symptom, not the cause!
@mastonline

5. @nicolawass1 @so_mo_co @mastonline
What we do differently
We offer an approach that gains much deeper insights into why a problem occurs
Deeper insights allow you to determine the most impactful response – allowing you to invest finite resources wisely
To illustrate how to gain deeper insights, we will now take you through a live project example
@mastonline

6. The problem – Liverpool has the second highest rate of adult pedestrian casualties in the UK!
221 resident adult pedestrian casualties per 100,000 people each year ( )

7. @nicolawass1 @so_mo_co @mastonline
Starting with the standard approach
Road Safety Analysis conducted analysis on available data sets, including STATS19
Used comparator authorities for context:
Similar networks – indicates whether roads contribute to collisions
Similar socio-demographics – indicates whether behaviour contributes to collisions
Liverpool differed from network comparators in differing ways to socio-demographic comparators
@mastonline

10. 37% of Sunday collisions occurred between midnight & 6am
Further 28% between 6pm and midnight on Sunday
54% injured on Saturdays were involved in collisions between 6pm and 3am

11. Other findings
13.8% involved taxi drivers (compared to 6.3% for network comparators & 9% for socio- demographic comparators)
CFs of ‘failed to look’; ‘impaired by alcohol’ & ‘careless, reckless’
54% of those crossing were not at a crossing, with 13% on a crossing & 8% near a crossing
55% were aged between 16 and 44 years old & 59% were men
Fatal report findings were shared to support findings – drugs, alcohol & night-time all featured
These findings provide us with some interesting themes – Night-time economy, impact of drugs and alcohol, and taxi drivers; we do not yet know the why!

12. ? ? ? Jumping to conclusions (standard approach) Identified issue
Assumption
Potential response
Effectiveness
Unusually high levels of collisions involving taxis – prevalent during weekend nights
Taxi drivers are not taking sufficient care around inebriated pedestrians
Awareness raising campaign targeted at taxi drivers?
Drugs and alcohol are significant contributory factors in pedestrian collisions at the weekend
Pedestrians are insufficiently aware of the increased risk to safety
Education based campaign?
People are not using safe crossing places
Traffic hard wear needed to encourage people to use pedestrian crossings and to avoid dangerous crossing sites
More barriers?
More crossing facilities? ? ? ?

13. Data is merely the jumping point - to develop an effective interventions we need to go further and try to understand the WHY!

14. Immersing yourself in environment
This revealed more than the data showed us :
Just how chaotic the street scene becomes at night
At night, some engineering measures have the effect of making the environment less safe!
Taxi drivers are very aware of the risks presented by drunk pedestrians
Conversations with Liverpool taxi drivers reveal that it is increasingly difficult to make a living compared to 10 years ago
We were seeing plates for taxi drivers come from a very wide geographical radius

15. @nicolawass1 @so_mo_co @mastonline
Questions raised by immersion?
What changed 10 yeas ago – causing a shift from taxi driving being a good living to an increasingly difficult one?
If taxi drivers know the risks – do we need to educate them further?
What is the impact of alcohol and drug use on pedestrian ability to exert self control? Why do they behave in such risky and unpredictable ways?
A quick revisit of the data revealed that there was a significant shift in the pattern of collisions 10 years ago …. When figures trippled and then remained consistenly high
Another deep dive back into the data revealed that taxis account for x% of collsions on Saturday nights.
But we still didn’t know – what changed
What was very clear was that taxi drivers were hyper aware of the risks presented by drunk and drugged pedestrians
@mastonline

16. Subject matter experts & wider research
Again, doing this reveals much more than the data showed us:
Trawl of online forums from 10 years ago reveal taxi driver unrest began with very large out of town taxi firm “cross boarder hiring”
LCC licensing – say this problem has got worse since deregulation of taxis
Going back to the data we see that 10 years ago – the time drivers indentify the problem there was a triling of casualties involving casualties – this figure never returns to ‘normal levels’
Add figure for taxi collisions at weekend
Police report growing cocaine use with taxi drivers but NO evidence of other substances?
Public heath observatory reveal the changing profile of the recreational drug user

17. Questions raised by subject matter experts?
Are people aware that alcohol and drug use makes them much more vulnerable?
How significant is the impact of de regulation on a taxi drivers working day?
Why are taxi drivers using cocaine and how prevalent is this?
It’s tempting to over focus on this issue when it could be a very small sub set of drivers!
Hypothesis 1 – pedestrians do know the risks but have problems inhibiting their behaviour
Hypothesis 2 – taxi drivers feature highly in collisions stats at night and at the weekend because they are fatigued and this is caused by external pressures in the market economy
If this is the case – then further awareness raising campaigns will have very limited impact if at all….

18. Primary research focused on pedestrians
They are aware of their increased vulnerability under the influence of alcohol
13% involving taxi drivers is unusual – what is going on
Pedestrians are already aware of their increased vulnerability under the influence of alcohol
In fact they are a lot more aware of road safety dangers than we often give them credit for
Hypothesis 1 therefore validated
51 participants between the ages of 16 and 34 were asked to identify credible threats to safety

19. Primary research focused on taxi drivers
A subset of taxi drivers have drugs in their possession and have offered them to customers
13% involving taxi drivers is unusual – what is going on
12 out of 58 (1 in 5) people between the ages of 16 & 34 stated that either they or someone they knew had been offered drugs by a taxi driver
58 participants between the ages of 16 and 34 were asked where they or a close friends had been offered drugs by a taxi driver in Liverpool

20. Primary research focused on taxi drivers
Hypothesis 2 – taxi drivers feature highly in collisions occurring at night because they are fatigued
Interviews with 20 taxi drivers revealed:
“If you go down any street in Liverpool centre you’ll find private hires sitting off absolutely everywhere”. The XXXXX taxi over there is plying for hire because he’s talking to a punter”.
“Ten years ago I used to finish 12 o’clock on a Sunday night. For the same money now I have to work until quarter past 5. I’m shattered, really shattered”.
“I now do a 65 hour week but that’s low in taxi terms. It is very common for XXXX drivers to do 150 hours a week.”
How can you be sure?
“You see the conversations on the XXXX boards - when people sign on and off. I’ll often ask them how many hours they’ve done”
13% involving taxi drivers is unusual – what is going on

21. Pedestrians what have we learnt?
Pedestrians know that they are more vulnerable on the roads when under the influence – lack of awareness is not the problem
Recreational drug use, particularly cocaine, has become normalised
Engineering measures that are effective in the day can have the opposite effect on people who are under the influence
When pedestrians are under the influence - they loose the ability to regulate their behaviours, taking FAST snap decisions rather than making considered choices
– the profile of the people using these drugs is different than we might expect (not just young clubbers)
In this mode of automatic/intuitive thinking road safety hardwear (designed for a more logical mindset) cease to function effectively
@mastonline

22. Taxi Drivers what have we learnt?
Fatigue is likely to be the primary issue, NOT a lack of awareness of the behaviours of drunk pedestrians
Whilst some taxi drivers are using cocaine – this is a relatively small number in relation to the overall problem focusing on this is unlikely to achieve population level change
Deregulation of taxis has resulted in a very hostile market economy for taxi drivers working in cities known for being popular night time locations
The only way to solve this problem is through changes to legislation supported by economic incentives.
We would hypothesis that they are doing to to counteract fatigue
Is this the realm of road safety ???/ probably not

23. X X X How this approach can benefit you Identified issue Assumption
Potential response
Effectiveness
Unusually high levels of collisions involving taxis – prevalent during weekend nights
Taxi drivers are not taking sufficient care around inebriated pedestrians
Awareness raising campaign targeted at taxi drivers?
Drugs and alcohol are significant contributory factors in pedestrian collisions at the weekend
Pedestrians are insufficiently aware of the increased risk to safety
Education based campaign?
People are not continuing to safe crossings
More safety measures are needed to encourage people to use pedestrian crossings and to avoid dangerous crossing sites
More barriers?
More crossing facilities? X X X

24. @nicolawass1 @so_mo_co @mastonline
So what happened next?
A happy ending!
Our client chose to focus their resources on a strand of the problem – right conditions for a successful behavioral intervention
Importantly they did not invest in solutions that would not have solved the problem they were facing
Instead we chose to focus on another strand
@mastonline

25. @nicolawass1 @so_mo_co @mastonline
Thank you 
@mastonline