Opinion and expertise aren’t always the same thing

Another opinion article in The Age (http://bit.ly/xLMIlg) by an academic from RMIT tries to express an opinion about Victoria Police enforcement, and incorporates the opinions of a commercial non-psychology person with previous opinions about enforcement, speed, etc. If nothing else the article once again suggests that well-trained and well-accepted road safety experts are not considered as essential.

So what are some of the interesting issues …

• So who is the author … perhaps I have misunderstood, but Peter Norden appears to be a priest with a single Masters degree in social work. He has had roles at academic roles… but his research interests according to the RMIT information seem to focus on “mapping disadvantage by postcode throughout Australia”, and Catholic schools and their roles in drugs and same-sex attraction. Bluntly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of research training or skill that might be an effective contribution to applying effective road safety opinion from the author, and this author is certainly not a psychologist with appropriate training and experience in the ways in which Police policies in road safety influence the behavioural outcomes of driving offenders.
• Who is the other main opinion holder quoted in the article… well John Lambert seems to be a little difficult. There is a John Lambert with a PhD on-line… but not our John Lambert at all! Our John Lambert’s web site (http://www.johnlambert.com.au) tells us very little at all (it seems) about his qualifications and seems to provide little information about his training and actual expertise… despite his use in the Peter Norden article. The FESAUST website tells us that he is a “mechanical, agricultural  and forensic engineer” without explaining his training and expertise. It would be interesting to have a basis of a trained and researched basis that would ensure the safe and expert opinions that help direct safe policy. I didn’t really get a sense of this!

The oddity again is The Age once again. Inviting or accepting the opinion of a Catholic Priest with a social work background that draws on an engineer with limited psychological training as the basis for making suggestions about the best, most effective road safety measures that improve behavioural outcomes for most drivers doesn’t seem helpful. The value is largely pointless because it doesn’t go anywhere near providing a well-balanced consideration of the range of psychological issues that should be used in attempting to inform the balanced opinions of readers as they relate to things that work and do not.

Can’t see the point really – except I suspect there are many people who aren’t really experts and who end up believing the poorly balanced things they read…

Just a thought… from a real psychologist with at least a little road safety research service?

Another pointless story in The Age!

Once again our own newspaper just doesn’t seem to understand the difference between limited commercial opinion and real research-based fact. The Age today spends some time looking at a rather limited opinion expressed by commercially-based driving instructors concerning their view that learners are exaggerating their driving experience as learners (see http://bit.ly/wcinfI).

So what are they saying – well absolutely nothing that includes a well-balanced, unbiased research outcome that really says anything of real value. There is a range of ‘information’ from professional driving instructors talking about how terrible the situation is (hmm, does someone out there want a stronger focus on professional instructors rather than parent-supported experience for learners?), and The Age reporter(s) seem to think that computer-based discussion sites somehow provide unbiased and badly-balanced discussion and to tell us about how much learning learners claim to get.

The alternative might be to do some real research based on a large, randomly sampled group of learner drivers to assess the proportion of reported learner experience in real experience compared to self-reported learner experience that they might fake. This would avoid the biased views of professional trainers who have little research skill, would avoid having politicians make comments that are largely pointless, and would ultimately let us know what the real facts look like under our expectation and aims that the key to safe novice driving relates to the amount and breadth of new driving.

The amazingly limited opinion expressed by The Age and based on an apparently biased sample of professional instructors is that this already countered in two ways – there is a system in place that helps VicRoads check the amount of reported learner experience when learners attend for their test that is already used to encourage sound practice… and there is already some real research on this issue that could have been addressed only if the reporters and commercial non-researchers could have relied upon real research rather than making up pointless opinion.

Just a crazy thought – but NEWS papers could actually make use of real FACTS rather than some sometimes silly and often biased opinions?

Oh really… The Age could find some REAL experts as a change

Hmm – The Age is giving us some road safety opinion. This time it seems to be based on a couple of apparent experts who want to tell us something important about the psychological factors that contribute to human behaviours, thinking that they relate to the effectiveness of Police decision making designed to reduce the broader road safety risks associated with unsafe drivers. The article is at http://bit.ly/z7Cuhq published this morning.

The issue here is once again a result of limited real expertise relevant to the way in which safety-related behaviours are understood and affected. We have an engineer with limited psychological training and expertise as they relate to the relationship between behavioural issues and the links between psychological factors and outcomes, and we have a social worker with an interest in what appears to be social work and crimes as they relate to a form of road safety behaviour quoted as an “innocent” behavioural problem.

There are some real psychologists with high levels of training and experience in relation to road safety, safety-related problems, the effects of road safety influences, and high levels of expertise… but instead The Age grabs hold of an engineer as having a worthwhile opinion!

So what about the key issues here… well let’s assume just for fun that causal factors by Police have TWO effects at least. Some offenders (a small number) avoid being stopped and drive fast to avoid the Police and cause crashes. There aren’t a lot of them, but some of them do have safety problems. They are the little group that John Lambert and others seem to carry on about as if they are the only group that matters.

Then there are some other offenders who do modify their behaviours when the Police threaten to stop them, so they do at least behave in some safety-related behaviours and may just get caught, fined, and modified.

We might need some research, but I suspect there are more of these than the little mob that have serious crashes… and the problem is that if the Police shift their behaviour to avoid detecting offenders, the number of unsafe offender behaviours will increase and the risk of safety-related crashes, injuries, and deaths will increase because the Police shift their behaviour.

So lets put a psychological hat on for a second and consider the two groups – sometimes the Police increase some crash risks, but at the same time they have a marked, successful outcome over larger groups of drivers when they do the right thing. You’d just wonder why a couple of people with limited expertise focus their comments on the small number of serious offenders only without saying much about the broader successful influences of the Victoria Police as part of their successful road safety program work.

Hmm – perhaps once again we are stuck by opinions of limited value that aren’t well informed by highly skilled and well-trained professionals? Perhaps it really is about time we relied on high-quality points of view rather than people with limited levels of advanced psychology to help understand the complexities of road safety. Just that same point of view again…

An opinion piece in the SMH

Ian Faulks makes an interesting comment and some feedback on an opinion about the importance of sound research raised by an opinion piece in the SMH (see http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/effective-law-and-order-policy-need-not-be-a-shot-in-the-dark-20120109-1prpm.html).

Ian’s opinion is excellent… and I’d add a couple of thoughts just for fun…

In particular, the article spends a bit of time drawing some attention about the importance of real expertise as the basis for sound road safety programs and policy. The interest here is the difference between sound expertise and the things that seem to take a lot of effort and energy but achieve nothing much at all.

So… we might decide to make effective, life saving and injury reduction modifications in driving behaviour … or as an alternative we might make use of alternatives such as politics, policy, biased opinions, less skilled researchers, limited researchers, limited researchers such as (woohoo) some driving instructors, commercial interests, and a strange curious of people who think they know something about changing HUMAN BEHAVIOUR when they have no real professional or skilled training and research in psychology and the modification of behaviour.

The decision is really pretty simple… if we want people’s behaviours to change in a way that actually save lives and reduces injuries, there seem to be a lot of people to ignore and a highly skilled and well-trained pool of people with real road safety skills.

It’s not really that difficult, is it?

Hmm – there is even a goodly list of people we could ignore in some of these behavioural issues given their lack of training and skills despite their “apparent” training and professional skill … now that would be a useful option! 

At last something a bit sophisticated!

The Age mentions the 2011 problem associated with pedestrian crash victims in Victoria (http://bit.ly/tBx5Xw) and then makes the excellent comment that a senior Police member in Victoria (Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe) is concerned about the behavioural issues that are related to the increasing pedestrian issues.

At last there is some interest about the behavioural complexities that contribute to fatality crashes and the importance of understanding psychological and behavioural processes that need to be addressed to reduce the risk of crash involvement. It does seem a little more sophisticated and useful that some of the simple minded notions that non-psychologists seem to push from time to time!

This does seem so much cleverer than talking only about speed limits!

Human behaviour might be important!

Once again we have a ‘leading road trauma expert’ from the Monash University Accident Research Centre in The Age (http://bit.ly/tB1TmW) telling us about Victoria’s road safety issues. He’s an engineer and seems highly focused on driving speed as a key issue – based on road safety in all of three countries that appear to differ in a huge number of ways.

It seems a little odd and might even be thought of as a bit simple minded in the absence of a detailed look at our road toll – and at least The Age brings an RACV point of view into the article. So what are just a few things that might be of some value rather than relying just on a MUARC engineer point of view:

• Well there are actually some psychological researchers who are well trained and highly skilled in relation to the behavioural issues that are relevant to road safety outcomes. There are even a few at Monash University as well as the rest of us with years of expertise and heaps of training. Just a thought!
• Blaming speed limits seems simple minded given the range of human behaviours that contribute… over 2009 and 2010, 16% of fatality crashes involved pedestrians, 18% involved motorcyclists, 42% involved hitting a fixed object, 17% involved wet conditions, 39% involved nighttime, and 53% involved high alcohol times. Seems like some sort of expert thinking about different behavioural conditions that contribute to fatal crashes might be useful.
• The contribution of speed limits seems rather complex. Forty-eight percent of fatal crashes in Victoria in 2009 and 2010 occurred in 100/110 km/h speed limits, but changing the actual speed limit will only change the behaviour of some drivers… many may well continue to drive faster than a speed limit just because they can, even if the speed limit is changed! Perhaps human behaviour is something more than just a speed limit in many cases?

The reality is that behaviour is a complex thing and that the range of serious road safety problems isn’t just a simple-minded notion that speed limits will have a dramatic effect on safety outcomes so we can look like Sweden or England. We really need some broader range of road safety experts and (perhaps a little novel) an interest on the part of the media concerning real expertise rather than yet another engineer or statistician. We need a stronger focus on people who really have some sensible psychological training, expertise, skill, and sophistication to help encourage more complex approaches to improve safety.

Just a thought…

Perhaps I am a little stupid today?

Well it is very nice of the NSW government to announce (according to Ian Faulks in his Twitter account today) that the

“NSW Transport releases its 2010 road trauma report: 405 deaths, 24,623 injured, 42,299 reported crashes (19,336 were casualty crashes)”…

but doesn’t anyone realise that these are data from 2010 and it is now rather close to the end of 2011 now?

I suspect we might have known just a little about 2010 quite some time ago assuming there are a few researcher people working in NSW who can count… and we might even have some accurate estimates for 2011 pretty soon that could just help inform some sensible decision making about what just might need to be done in 2012 to affect the road safety programs.

Just a crazy thought – perhaps the NSW government could be just a little more current in its thinking so it could just think about making some sensible decisions?

Starting Again

Greetings and hello!

I am starting again after the combined challenges of a new illness with two lots of wild surgery and something like nine months ahead of me involving radiation and drugs (yay)… and just to make it more challenging some sort of destructive computer bug that intervened across all our web sites made it necessary to destroy everything after the surgery.

The end result – well it’s a couple of new web sites. One of them is mine and I am pretty keen to express some pretty clear comments concerning some of the professional work that I have always enjoyed. It’s about time people started enjoying some scientifically and professionally biased viewpoints.

I am looking forward to being a little blunt on-line… so enjoy!