Numbers tell stories and teach lessons. The Malta National Statistics Office regularly publishes data on numerous topics obtained from other government sources. In a way, the NSO is at the mercy of the data quality it is forwarded.
When it comes to statistics related to road accidents, sources of data include the police, warden services and the Department of Health, while Transport Malta supplies road vehicle statistics.
Since 1999, the numbers of road traffic injuries have been published with a distinction between slight, grievous and fatal injuries for the three classes of road users: drivers, passengers and pedestrians. Cyclists have never been included as a separate class in spite of repeated calls from myself and some others.
During the fourth quarter of 2013, there was a change in the way data was presented. This can lead to difficulty in comparing past data as regards drivers, passengers and pedestrian injuries. The current data does not distinguish which vehicle class is associated with the injuries of which road user class, so that no one can know what type of vehicle caused the pedestrian injuries.
Unfortunately, larger vehicles are under-represented as a cause of injury. Injuries tend to occur more in the smaller and older vehicles in a multi-vehicle collision. So while a pedestrian can be classed as being injured by any vehicle, when a large goods vehicle collides with a smaller vehicle, with injury to the occupants of the latter, the ‘injury by means of transport’ is listed as the smaller vehicle.
Would an injured pedestrian’s ‘means of transport’, then, be put down as ‘legs’?
This problem is exemplified by the unfortunate female motorcyclist who was the first road fatality of 2016. The incident involved a left-hand-drive concrete truck and a medium-capacity motorcycle.
Is there an underlying agenda for inflating the actual vehicle fleet number of the island?
However, the data released in the NSO’s report on traffic accidents in the first quarter of 2016 showed two fatalities under ‘motorcycle’ but no fatalities under ‘goods-carrying’ vehicles. (Table 4 – Injuries sustained by drivers in road traffic accidents: Jan-Mar).
There is a similar question when a second rider was fatally involved with a car and a bus in Mġarr Road but no mention of fatalities under ‘buses and coaches’ is entered in the data.
This quandary clearly shows that the bigger vehicles involved in traffic incidents with casualties may be grossly under-represented, especially so when commercial vehicles make up 20 per cent of the total vehicle fleet and do greater vehicle-kilometres than other vehicles.
Most traffic incidents are two-vehicle incidents. Both vehicle classes should be listed in the data in the following format: 75 � Goods vehicles (0-1-4) / passenger cars (1-4-15) collisions.
This means there were 75 incidents involving commercial vehicles (zero fatalities, one serious and four slight injuries – from occupants of commercial vehicles) and passenger cars (one fatality, four serious and 15 slight injuries – from occupants of passenger cars).
There have already been six fatalities this year. Two occurred while driving quadbikes. One drove off a cliff and another collided with a bus. Will the quadbikes be classified as ‘cars’? Is the bus a cause – even though the inquiry has still to determine who was at fault?
Turning to road vehicle statistics, since 2008, vehicle numbers have persistently shown figures that do not stand up to an accountant’s scrutiny. The vehicle fleet size depicted at the end of each last-quarter NSO release does not tally with the number of newly (new and used) licensed vehicles put on the road and the number of used licensed vehicles (exported, garaged or scrapped) taken off the road.
A query by phone to the offices of the NSO elicited the explanation that the numbers published are not accurate!
I cannot understand how this inaccuracy, squarely due to Transport Malta, never manages to correct itself at least by the following year, as this discrepancy increases annually.
At the end of 2007, the number of licenced vehicles was 294,658. At the end of 2016, Malta’s road-licensed vehicle fleet was given as 358,945, a net increase of 64,289. From Q1 2008 to Q4 2016, there were 161,999 newly licensed vehicles put on the road and 138,253 vehicles taken off the road (exported, garaged and scrapped).
The resultant vehicle fleet by the end of 2016 should therefore have been 23,747 more than the 2007 fleet – a glaring discrepancy of 40,542 phantom vehicles.
There is clearly a substantial error. Which is in error? Vehicles taken off the road or the newly licensed vehicles? Is there an underlying agenda for inflating the actual vehicle fleet number of the island?
If we want to learn more from numbers, the NSO should endeavour to collect appropriate data and solicit the sources to collect accurate data.