Road safety storm rages

By Dan Gilbert

03rd July 2006

Official bodies from all parts of the motoring industry have attacked the Government's record on road safety after official figures.

Figures from an Oxford University report show that, despite millions spent backing the 'kill your speed' policy, the UK's roads are not getting safer.The "Changes in Safety on England's Roads" shows that road safety campaigns focussing almost solely on speed have failed to deliver - where police statistics have shown reductions in crashes, the more reliable hospital admission figures show that road safety has flatlined - just as many people are being hurt today as in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, official Deptartment of Transport figures also paint an equally desperate picture - pedestrian deaths are unchanged from 2004; just as many drivers are dying; and cyclist fatalities increased by 10%. Just 20 fewer people died on the UK's roads.

The Association of British Driver's director of Policy, Mark McArthur-Christie, commented "The real figures tell the truth - and tell it clearly. Despite millions spent on humps, calming, cameras and campaigns our roads are not getting safer. Simplicity, soundbites and political expediency have been allowed to dictate a road safety policy that is more concerned with legality than safety.

"Since the early 1990s, policy has majored on compliance with speed limits above all else and now we're paying the price in lives. We have a road safety policy that is a lame one-trick pony, simply because it fails to recognise the complexity of the driving and riding tasks".

McArthur-Christie continued, "These figures show we need finally to acknowledge that safe driving is about so much more than speed. What about observation? What about anticipation? What about hazard management? We need thinking, trained and educated drivers and road users, not simply ones who believe that speed limit compliance is the pinnacle of driving-skill achievement."

Meanwhile, Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation said: "It is disappointing that the rate of casualty reduction seems to have stalled. New thinking is needed to improve driving standards, pedestrian education and poor road and junction design."

And outspoken founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign, Paul Smith, was outraged: "Engineering improvements are ongoing - we know we're building safer cars. We know we're engineering out black spots. We know we're getting better as post crash medical care. The gains from these factors are very substantial. The failure of fatalities to fall means that some other factor is making matters worse. I know what that factor is - it's bad road safety policy making drivers worse. DfT road safety policy has failed to save lives. Speed cameras have failed to save lives. Speed limit reductions have failed to save lives."

More comment from the ABD here: www.abd.org.uk and from SafeSpeed: www.safespeed.org.uk

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