THE SPEED KILLS MYTH

Right so why do I insist that ‘Speed doesn’t kill – never has never will’, when according to Stig he and the rest of the world knows it does. Well there are actually three answers to this question and here they are.

1. First off we have to consider what is ‘Speed’? The Oxford concise dictionary defines it as ‘the rate at which someone or something moves’. It doesn’t refer to any particular value, such as 30mph or 90 mph, simply that something is moving. Therefore if the slogan ‘Speed Kills’ was accurate it would mean that as soon as something started to move it would die.
This would mean of course the instant extinction of every living thing, plant or animal, reptile or insect as soon as it moved, and since the world is still populated with plenty of living things this is proof that speed does not kill.

2. Then of course we would have people saying but this refers to vehicles, well the obvious answer to that is then it should say so. Either a statement is factually correct or it isn’t. Even then though the slogan is still incorrect. Why? Because it is undefined. What speed are you talking about? 2mph 60mph 1300mph? Until you quantify the word ‘speed’ it is meaningless. You might just as well say ‘Colours Kill’ or ‘Weather Kills’ or ‘Height Kills’ and so on, until you qualify what you are saying the slogan is meaningless.

Let us give the unbelievers a bit of latitude. Let us say that ‘Excessive Speed Kills’. But you still have a problem. What is excessive? Well if you are talking about vehicles most people usually assume, quite wrongly, that excessive speed is exceeding the speed limit. It’s not. In this context it is a speed that is inappropriate for the conditions prevailing at the time. What conditions? Well there are hundreds of variables, such as vehicle condition, road condition and so forth. Experienced drivers know that you can’t quantify excessive speed, there times when 100mph is fine and safe and there are also times when 10mph is not. So the safest thing is to define excessive as being inappropriate for the prevailing conditions.

So can we now say that ‘Excessive Speed Kills’. No because that would mean that every time someone drove at an excessive speed they would die, and quite clearly that doesn’t happen. You see the velocity of your vehicle is immaterial in deciding whether a death occurs. What is pertinent is whether your vehicles hits something, or to put it another way has an accident. So being ever helpful we further qualify our statement by saying “Excessive speed when the vehicle is in collision kills”. But of course we can’t. There are millions of incidents such as this where no one is hurt, for death to be a possibility an injury must be sustained.

This brings us to ‘“Excessive speed when the vehicle is in collision and an injury is sustained kills.’ The only problem is that is incorrect as well. I have been involved in several accidents, sustained minor injuries and I’m still alive. So what we have to do is quantify it further and then we end up with “Excessive speed when the vehicle is in collision and someone sustains injuries can lead on certain occasions to death’.

At last we have a statement that is accurate, bit of a journey from ‘Speed Kills’ wasn’t it? Speed cannot kill you, only injuries can do that.

And finally.

3. The legal document that should be issued on every death in the UK is the certificate issued by a doctor. This is taken to the registrar when the death is registered, and then a death certificate is issued. This contains such details as the full name of the deceased, age, address, who registered the death and most importantly the cause of death.

During my lifetime I have studied hundreds of these certificates and never have I seen the cause of death given as ‘Speed’. For anyone to maintain ‘Speed Kills’ the answer to proving their point is simple, get the Death Certificate and see for yourself, I am willing to bet £100 that they will never find one that lists the cause of death as ‘Speed’. The reason is quite simple really ‘Speed doesn’t kill – never has never will’.