New campaign aims to put Britain first in road safety
A NEW campaign has been launched to return Britain to European leadership in road casualty reduction and save a staggering £6 billion a year in crash-related costs...
‘Getting Ahead’ outlines the importance of proactive road safety measures being taken on Britain’s most dangerous roads
Britain led the continent’s road safety league table in 2001, but has since fallen behind the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, which have adopted the concept of ‘vision zero’ – no deaths at all on the roads. However, in Britain, residents are almost eight times more likely to die on the roads than in any other daily activity.
The Campaign for Safe Road Design was launched this month at the House of Lords with the aim to ensure that the Government makes a commitment to spending more money on safer road design as part of its new crash reduction strategy from 2010. Supporters calculate that a safe road infrastructure programme could halve the total of 30,720 people killed and seriously injured on the nation’s roads last year by 2015 and halve the figure again by 2020 – thus saving £6bn or 0.5% of GDP a year.
The Campaign for Safe Road Design is backed by an amalgamation of partners, including RoadSafe, and is being led by the UK-based Road Safety Foundation. It established the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP), which is a sister organisation to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), which crash tests new cars.
The Foundation’s latest report suggested that 30% of Britain’s Aroads were not ‘safe’ and almost a quarter of motorways fell below the top safety level (see below).
With 375,000 people killed and seriously injured on Britain’s roads in the last decade at an economic cost of £200 billion, the Campaign calls for ‘five-star drivers in fivestar vehicles on five-star roads’.
Alongside driver and vehicle law enforcement and new safetyfocused technology appearing in vehicles, campaigners want ‘safe road systems to be at least as safe as rail or air’. They say that Britain has fallen down the road safety league table because it fails to take action on ‘safer drivers, safer vehicles and safer roads together’.
But, where road safety design improvements have been taken at crash blackspots, the Campaign for Safe Road Design points to a 300% return on investment in the first 12 months alone. Yet, presently Britain spends less than £150 million a year on local road safety schemes.
Dr Joanne Hill, who heads the Foundation, said: “A safe road infrastructure programme is a quick, certain and affordable way to target life-saving treatments and remove road hazards known to kill and maim.
“It will deliver economic and social returns as high as any investment in the economy - not least by reducing the burden of emergency treatment and longterm care of people disabled in crashes.
“An affordable safety improvement programme can save tens of thousands of lives and prevent serious injuries over the next decade by removing the road features that kill and maim.”
The campaign was launched with publication of a new report – ‘Getting Ahead’ – which outlines the importance of proactive road safety measures being taken on Britain’s most dangerous roads – where the crashes that cause death, injury and economic disruption are most likely to occur.
Most road deaths and serious injuries take place inside vehicles and are due to vehicles running off the road and hitting hard obstacles close to the road edge, head-on crashes and crashes at junctions.
Two-thirds of road crashes occur outside major towns and, say safety campaigners, serious crashes drop by more than half when roads are given a safety makeover with the use of safe crossings, safety fences, safe turning bays and good hazard markings.
Campaign chairman John Dawson said: “Road crashes bleed away 1.5% of GDP (£18bn) – more than we spend on primary schools and GPs. Our roads need a safety overhaul.”
In calling on the Government to ‘make safe road design a national transport priority’ the Campaign for Safe Road Design is demanding:
- ‘Self-explaining’ roads that make driver error in reading the road unlikely - more than 90% of road casualties start with an error
- ‘Forgiving roads’ that provide protection such as pedestrian refuges, sheltered turning bays, roadside safety fencing and the use of collapsible roadside poles in place of rigid poles.
- Further information is available at www.saferoaddesign.com