BMJ  2005;330 (12 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7487.0-h

Editor's choice

The case for slowing down

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"Forty-eight years old, profoundly asleep at nine thirty on a Friday night—this is modern professional life." Henry Perowne, neurosurgeon and central character of Ian McEwan's new book, Saturday (p 368), "hits the [hospital] corridors with an impatient stride his retinue struggles to match," considers each glass of wine on Saturday a gamble in case he is called to an emergency, and suffers an unfortunate road rage incident. BMJ readers will have shared many of Perowne's experiences, including road rage—if you don't encounter this once a week in London you can't be driving properly. Might road rage be better considered as a collision avoided—a preventive measure? Traffic collisions already account for 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries each year worldwide.

Speed cameras are a controversial way of reducing these collisions. Motoring organisations and the general media portray speed cameras as a cash cow for the police, an unreasonable . . . [Full text of this article]

Kamran Abbasi, acting editor

(kabbasi@bmj.com)


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Surgery for congenital heart conditions in Oxford
Bruce Keogh
BMJ 2005 330: 319-320. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

BMJ appoints its first woman editor
Caroline White
BMJ 2005 330: 323. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Cardiac mortality in children in Oxford hospital is not excessive
Caroline White
BMJ 2005 330: 324. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Saturday
John Quin
BMJ 2005 330: 368. [Extract] [Full Text]

Effectiveness of speed cameras in preventing road traffic collisions and related casualties: systematic review
Paul Pilkington and Sanjay Kinra
BMJ 2005 330: 331-334. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Answer to your question and 2 further questions
Nick Archer
bmj.com, 18 Mar 2005 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ