The Most Important Nut

Abstract

A dissertation read before the Society on Friday. 10th November, 1967.

A motorist once asked a motor mechanic what he thought was the most important nut on a motor vehicle and though there is no direct answer to such a question the one given by the mechanic not only put the driver in his place but also summed up the whole problem of Road Accident Prevention.

COST

Every twelve months, on the roads of Great Britain alone, nearly 8,000 people are killed and 350,000 injured, 90,000 of them seriously so*. This in itself is bad enough, but analysis of these figures by age and sex (Figure 1) makes the picture even worse. It can be seen that the greatest proportion of deaths and injuries are to young males between the ages of sixteen and thirty: the people that the country can least afford to lose whether human or economic factors are considered.