There was good news and bad news in the traffic statistics released by Police on Monday.

For the second consecutive year, the total number of collisions declined.

But the number of people receiving serious injuries as a consequence of accidents ? and the number of road deaths rose.

In theory, an overall decline in accidents may mean that over time, the number of deaths and serious injuries will fall as well, but so far that does not seem to be the case.

It may be that Government decisions to allow larger and more highly powered cars and bikes is contributing to the severity of collisions even as the number of collisions edges down. Certainly today?s 50cc bikes ? let alone the ?Hardly Davisons? and other 125cc bikes now allowed ? are not your father?s Mobylette.

There is also a strange contradiction in the statistics. The vast majority of collisions concern bikes involved cars, but the majority of deaths, and presumably a high proportion of serious injuries, involved bike riders.

Similarly, the people most likely to be involved in a collision were aged between 41 and 50, with 31- to 40-year-olds next. But anecdotally, those killed in accidents tend to be younger as well.

All of this suggests that although bikes made just a quarter of all vehicles in accidents, the lack of protection on a bike compared to a car makes them that much more dangerous to the rider compared to a car or truck.

How ironic then that even today the level of training required to ride a motorcycle is so much lower than it is for a car. To be sure, a badly driven car is a menace to all other road users including pedestrians, but bikes pose the biggest threat to the actual driver.

That?s why it would be a good idea for the level of training for bike riders to be raised and for the driving test to include an actual road test.

Of course, that will not stop people driving at dangerous speeds or carelessly once they have passed. Preventing that will require a higher level of deterrence on the roads, higher and more strictly enforced penalties for those who are caught and a massive public relations campaign to stop the madness.

Development orders

Shadow Environment Minister Cole Simons was right to question his Government counterpart?s reluctance to lay out just when and how a special development order can be issued.

Minister Neletha Butterfield, who has shown courage in the past in turning down these orders, was reluctant to explain what constituted the public interest when interviewed because she was afraid it would be used against her over the Southlands issue.

Instead, the public was fed a lot of waffle which suggested she is leaning towards improving it.

Where requests are made to override planning regulations ? and there are times when it may be necessary ? there should be a transparent, publicly known series of tests that the potential developer must overcome, along with a clearly understood process.

The current process is cloaked in mystery and is understood by virtually no one, possibly including the Environment Ministry itself. That brings the Government and developers into disrepute and makes a mockery of the entire process. Why should anyone follow the law when it can apparently turned over at a whim.