Cambridgeshire adopts the Safe System

25 March 2018

We are delighted to hear that  Cambridgeshire is to adopt a new ‘safe systems framework’.

A key element of the plan is the new ‘ road safety hub’ will bring together expertise across disciplines to provide one high profile point of contact for road safety information and advice – and improve the presentation of data and information to the public.The hub will offer a comprehensive range of services to communities across the county including child road safety education, investigating collision hotspots and safety auditing for planned changes to roads. The hub is also designed to help road safety professionals use their expertise to deliver targeted behaviour change interventions at specific groups identified as higher risk.

It is hoped the hub will enable the council to maximise opportunities to access external funding for large safety schemes and additional projects, and exploit commercial opportunities to provide road safety training and advice.The new process for the identification of high risk locations is based on recorded injury collisions. At present, a single ‘complex’ system is used to define a cluster site up to 1500m in length. The changes will see a simplified process, looking at both localised cluster sites as well as whole routes.

The new system is designed to highlight the road safety risk for specific routes and locations, which will inform the ‘prioritisation of available improvement funding’

The plan which has been endorsed by the council and which encompasses key elements of the plan for the Decade of Action shows that Driver Error or reaction factors were cited in 74% of all collisions in Cambridgeshire 2010-2015, while road environment factors and vehicle defect factors were only cited in 18% and 2% of collisions respectively