Fiona Govan
SPAIN’S traffic directorate has reported that 26 people died in car accidents during the Semana Santa getaway, fewer than the 36 predicted by an algorithm used in an Easter road safety campaign.
It was the first ‘normal’ Holy Week following two years of travel restrictions as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and huge numbers of people took to Spain’s highways for trips across the peninsula.
But the number of fatalities was better than expected with 26 deaths caused by road traffic accidents between Friday April 8 and Monday April 18.
This is an improvement on the 2019 figures when 27 road deaths occurred during the same period.
Spain’s DGT had launched a campaign ahead of Easter week using Big Data algorithms that predicted 36 deaths on the roads among the 14.6million travellers.
A chilling video campaign focused on individuals of different ages stating that they will die on Spain’s roads this year.
The campaign video ended with the phrase ‘Make Big Data wrong’.
Whether the campaign did the trick and people drove more carefully, or the weather conditions made for safer roads is unclear, but the stats do prove that Big Data got it wrong this year.
READ MORE:
- ‘This Easter I’m going to die’: Spain launches chilling road safety campaign ahead of Semana Santa
- New driving rules you need to know about that come into force in Spain on March 21
