At Full Chat

But add those together and they total 3,350, not 3,508. So I asked a DfT spokesman if the higher or the lower figure is correct. Sadly, he confirmed the higher of the two, and seemed prepared to leave it at that. But I reminded him what he surely knew - we were leaving dead road users unaccounted for. How can 158 deaths be cruelly lost?

After some frantic searching, the press officer found answers to some of my questions. He mentioned 11 bus and coach deaths, and 116 goods vehicle fatalities. But even after taking these into consideration, there were still 31 people disgracefully unaccounted for. "Good point. They'll be in there somewhere," the DfT spokesman quipped. It turns out a further 12 were in unspecified motor vehicles; eight were in machines such as carts or milk floats; three were riding horses and eight were in or on agricultural vehicles.

Once the final breakdown was squeezed out of the DfT, it became clear that of the 3,508 deceased, just over half were car drivers or passengers. Does it really matter whether people were using cars, motorcycles, goods vehicles, buses, coaches, bicycles, milk floats or travelling by foot when they lost their lives going about their daily business? Absolutely. We need to analyse the figures further and study, for example, which type of cars are involved; whether professional or amateur drivers are the biggest problem; what type of footwear dead 'pedestrians' were wearing (walking shoes are one thing, roller blades quite another); and what percentage of those pedestrians were drunk and died because they stepped into the path of a moving vehicle. Also, let's not forget taxis, plus trams and trains whose tracks occupy road and pedestrian space. How many direct or indirect deaths and injuries do they cause?

Not that deaths and injuries should be lumped together. The Government does that by talking, for example, about 4,100 children killed or seriously injured in 2003. Surely it's more appropriate to remind everyone that of the 4,100, the overwhelming majority (3,929) are injuries and a tiny minority (171) are deaths. The reason for lumping these deaths and injuries together is more about political point scoring than improving safety on the road. Which is why it's not unfair to say the Government is failing to deal with the most serious road accidents. In 1998, Labour's first full year in office, there were 3,421 deaths. The latest figure (for 2003) shows that matters have got significantly worse, with 3,508 fatalities. Of course, the ruling politicians can't be blamed for all of these tragic and needless deaths. But they have to take the blame for some of them.