False precision drives me nuts and it may have a lot to answer for in the transport sector and the forecast-led paradigm that just wont seem to go away. It was cathartic to be given the chance by Dom Browne, Editor of Highways Magazine, to write the viewpoint article below for this month’s edition.

You might think, therefore, it is an act of masochism to ask you to provide your own favourite examples of false precision but I’d love to see them in the comments. I used to have a Twitter account called False Precision where I shared the most egregious ones.

Here are some real-life beauties included in the article to whet your appetite:

🔢 “The global mobility as a service (maas) market size is expected to grow from USD 4362.60m in 2022 to USD 94035.41m by 2033.” Dear god, people get paid to produce this!

🔢 “The benefits could range from £308m to £804m”. Go on boys, tell it to us straight – you don’t actually know do you?!

🔢 “The key results this year are an increase in traffic vehicle miles of roughly 44% between 2010 and 2035”. An oldie but goodie from DfT in 2011 (I think ‘roughly 44%’ is an oxymoron).

🔢 “‘Increases in the number of seconds of time lost due to congestion on motorways also varies under the Core scenario; from 81.8% in one region to 215.5% in another.” That’s my final prize winner from DfT in 2023 looking from 2025 to 2060. In fact it gets a lifetime achievement award because the very next sentence in the offending document says “These projections are not definitive predictions of what will happen in the future”. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

This sort of behaviour invites misplaced confidence in investing in the future when what we should have is a more honest portrayal of the outlook we can offer. And for goodness sake, let’s prioritise being approximately right instead of precisely wrong.