THE number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads of North Yorkshire has fallen in the last year, figures released this week show.

Among the reasons for this, is the fact authorities have studied statistics from previous years on how and where people were coming to harm on the roads.

Through research, it is possible for them to make changes at incident hotspots, which will in turn reduce the number of drivers and pedestrians hurt or killed on these roads.

Those changes may be as simple as placing mobile speed cameras on a stretch of road until drivers understand they shouldn’t be speeding, or more complicated traffic calming measures such as alterations to the road. These are often a last resort, as the time it takes to implement them causes inconvenience for motorists. However, it’s fair to say a few weeks of adding an extra ten minutes to your journey is a fair trade to make sure someone gets to make it home alive, or a young child gets to see their next birthday.

Of course, the problem isn’t eradicated - just this week, there have been a number of people killed and injured in crashes around the region. But these tragic deaths will go towards informing the authorities on the safety of the roads, and could lead to measures which prevent future incidents.

The measures will never bring anyone back, but their grieving families may take some relief in knowing their deaths could save lives in the future.

I never intended to write this month’s column about road safety, and in a way, I’m not.

I’m starting it this way to show how logic in the face of tragedy can lead to a better, safer world, long after the sirens and blue flashing lights have stopped.

The reason I wanted to talk about that, was because once again we’ve been seeing pictures on the news of yet more American communities in mourning after another series of senseless massacres.

Last week, Chris Harper put on a bulletproof vest and walked into Umpqua Community College in Oregon carrying six legally-owned and licensed weapons. He murdered nine people then killed himself.

The same day, five-month-old Aavielle Wakefield was shot in the chest and killed while riding in a car with her mother in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the third child aged five or under to have been shot to death in that city in the last four weeks.

The previous weekend, four people were killed and 52 others – including a 10-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy – were injured in three days of shootings across Chicago. The weekend before that the same city saw eight people killed and 45 injured.

Last weekend, an eight-year-old girl was shot dead in Tennessee, apparently after telling an 11-year-old neighbour he couldn’t play with her puppy, and on Monday in Ohio, an 11-year-old boy shot and killed his 12-year-old brother while on a day out with two adults.

While most would look at the shameful increase in gun-related deaths and think ‘hang on a minute, we could do something to improve this’, the USA seems happier pledging more money to bomb hospitals overseas, rather than introduce administrative changes to the ease with which their citizens can buy an assault rifle.

Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush told reporters “stuff happens” in response to the latest college massacre, and I’m sure that’s some reassurance to the families of the 8,500-plus men and women who saw everything they ever were or could be horrifically extinguished by tiny piece of metal bought legally for pennies in The Land Of The Free - a country that made the sale of Kinder Eggs illegal because the toys represent a choking hazard.

To his credit, President Barack Obama seems desperate to do something. After all, he’s the one who has to stand before the families and the cameras every month and condemn the work of the lunatics who think the right to bear arms means they should destroy as many members of their local community as possible.

You’d like to think that the President of the United States of America would be able to take one look at the steady rise of murder by supermarket-bought weaponry and order legislation to crack down on it, but thanks to organisations like the NRA ploughing funding into political parties, coupled with the willing misunderstanding of the English language, it seems the Second Amendment – which is, in fairness, enshrined in the constitution, but remains in itself an amendment to the original text – will remain untouched for years to come.

It’s nice to know we live in a country where a problem is analysed and rectified in an effort to save lives.

But it is absolutely staggering to consider that a country calling itself civilised would so willingly leave its residents in constant mortal danger simply because fanatics won’t redraft 27 words of a 224 year old document.