On Wed, 22 Nov 2006, Steve Walker wrote:

In message , Tom Anderson
writes
On Tue, 21 Nov 2006, Steve Walker wrote:

In message , Huge
writes

In any case, the grouping of "killed or seriously injured" always
strikes me as spin. There have been dozens of incidents in my kitchen
in which someone has been killed or superficially burned.

A strikingly nonsensical argument.

Would you rather I listed the number of people who have been decapitated
or slightly scratched by my cats? Or the number of golden eagles and
voles they have killed this year? The number of pigeons and elephants
which have flown into my second floor windows?

Not really.

Do you not see the error inherent in grouping two sets of statistics
where the less severe event is one or two orders of magnitude more
common than the more severe?

Presumably, you'd also object to including, say, broken ribs in the total,
since they also account for less than 10% of the total number of serious
injuries. Ditto burned shoulders, crushed kidneys, or any other individual
type of injury. This logic leads to a much reduced count of injuries, i
have to concede.

I don't see what's wrong with the KSI grouping; yes, being killed is
worse than being seriously injured, but being seriously injured is
still pretty bad. If ten people are put in wheelchairs by accidents on
some given road, but nobody dies, are we to consider it safe?

You really don't know what the definition of seriously injured is, do you?

Yes, actually, i do - basically, hospitalised. Are you by any chance
related to Evel Knievel? You seem to be very good at jumping to
conclusions.

http://www.highways.gov.uk/aboutus/d...annex_2(1).pdf

"An injury for which a person is detained in hospital as an inpatient,
or any of the following injuries whether or not they are detained in
hospital; fractures, concussion, internal injuries, crushings, burns,
severe cuts and lacerations, severe general shock requiring medical
treatment and injuries causing death 30 or more days after the accident"

So, by dint of my (unhospitalised) burns, by the definition used for
road accidents there have been serious injury accidents in my kitchen.

I would imagine, or rather hope, that the working definition is slightly
more nuanced than the one you quote. It would clearly be nonsensical to
count minor burns as serious injuries. I can't find any detailed
information about how it's done, though.

Similarly, anyone who has been kept in overnight as a precaution is
recorded as seriously injured.

Okay, that is silly.

So anyway, if KSI is duff, what do you suggest we count?

tom

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