My point here is was he right when he postulated "creating more accidents"? Or injuries/deaths, if you like? From experience, which is best/safest - with or without safety belt? And also from experience, what group suffers more injuries using chain saws? With or without safety equipment? Crash helmets on a bike? Hard hats on a construction site? Protection gloves? Do you think we should discard safety devices in order to get less accidents? Do we have any historical proof of possible benefits of such a theory?
We may look back and think things were better in the 'good old days' but In 1930 the number cars on the road in the UK topped one million.
There were 7305 road deaths in the UK in 1930. Cars had no safety features, and there wasn't any driver training.
Due to the number of deaths controlling traffic became a top priority and the Road Traffic Act was created in 1930, The Highway Code 1931 and The Driving Test 1935.
In comparison in 2019 we had over 30 million vehicles on the road in the UK. There were 1870 road deaths in the UK in 2019.
That's a quarter of the 1930 figure with 30 times the number of vehicles on the road.Worldwide the safest roads in the world are the 'SUN' countries. Scandinavia, Switzerland, The UK and Netherlands.
The risk of dying as a result of a road traffic injury is highest in the African Region (26.6 per 100 000 population), and lowest in the European Region (9.3 per 100 000).
Adults aged between 15 and 44 years account for 59 percent of global road traffic deaths. 77 percent of road deaths are males.
UK Statistics
