wafflycat wrote:
Article in today's Norwich Evening News.

Online at

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/conte...A26%3A07%3A217

or

http://tinyurl.com/nlg8w

Includes...

"The number of young people hurt in crashes and accidents on roads around
Norwich has rocketed - and experts have pinned the blame on molly-coddling
parents and the rising compensation culture.

The number of people aged 18 or younger being treated at the Norfolk and
Norwich University Hospital's accident and emergency unit has gone up from
183 in 2003/4 to 345 from March last year to the end of February this year."

There is almost certainly something funny about those figures unless
the Norfolk general traffic carnage rate has gone up like a rocket. I
suspect that something is redirecting patients to the Univ. hospital
from another hospital or clinics though I suppose it is possible that
some major change in local transport patterns ( changing of buse
service or schedules or pehaps school transport regulations) may abe
raising accident rates.

Otherwise you almost certainly should be seeing a massive increase in
KSI's that would show up in Gov't stats.



He said: "It could be the case that more young people are going to hospital
with slight injuries. If a child gets knocked off their bike but the police
are not called, we would not record it.

This is vaguely possible but what would have precipitated the increase
in a 1 year period? The jump is too big unless there has been some
major health authority initiative or some scare campaign.

"We are aware of a certain level of under-reporting of accidents when people
don't report something to us. However, our research shows that collisions
are down in the 18 and under age group.

I would trust the police figure here more than the hospital's. The
police should be drawing their data from a pre-defined area. I assume
the hospital takes whom-so-ever they get.


I find it disturbing that the police seem glib about the figures, but then
again, this is Norfolk, where many a motorist is very leniently dealt with
for breaking the law... I am reminded when Vernon was victim of a
hit-and-run and the police really weren't keen on having an officer attend
the scene.

I don't see it as glib. They are saying that there is a little blip in
the figures at one hospital that does not correspond to anything they
are seeing. Until the newspaper has some comparable figures for all the
region's hospitals the single data point is not all that useful.

As the police noted it could just be that ambulances are going to the
Univ hospital because the Emergency is less clogged with other cases or
the local cafe has better coffee.