The Working Safer Vision included improvement objectives for reduction of fatal and serious workplace injuries. Without getting too deep into the minutiae of where we are now, raw data from the Worksafe website on work related fatalities shows no significant improvement in the simple number of deaths. 2013: 57, 2014 44, 2015: 45, 2016: 50, 2017: 50. But the baseline and ongoing stats for the Vision is adjusted using a mind-boggling formula to achieve a rate called "Age-Standardised Rate per 100,000 Person Years". This is consistent with international practice. Using this, NZ has already achieved the goal for 2020 (albeit with a sign of a worsening rate as we speak).

Contrast that with the so-called National Road Toll. It has always been the case that agencies, including the Police, steadfastly refuse to use adjustments for more population, more cars and more kilometres. We are emotionally told that "This year's deaths are the highest since Year X, (when we were all driving Austins and the Auckland Harbour Bridge had 4 lanes)". The underlying rationale, I suspect, is that we are being rallied to support "the cause". We must never let sissy things like population adjusted rates deflect our evangelistic purpose. "Onward against the odds!" "We shall overcome!"

Internationally, road death comparisons are available that use rates like road fatalities per 100,000 population, per 100,000 motor vehicles, per billion kms. NZ is included in the lists. I'm sure all the relevant agencies would have those figures over a long period of time, which may, in fact show NZ is improving. (I haven't tried to find out yet). But they don't talk about them publicly. We just get dismal adverts showing drunk drivers dying in ditches, and exhortations which include the implied critiscism that we are all toads on roads.

What does the Forum think? Should we stay with the emotional thing, or should we get real? Either way, why can't road deaths and work deaths be treated the same way?