Call for better road design
ROAD design is crucial in cutting Britain’s road casualties and the global road death toll of 1.2 million people to zero, according to John Dawson, chairman of the UK’s Campaign for Safe Road Design...
It is for that reason that the organisation has backed a major new report from The International Transport Forum, an inter-governmental body within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Called ‘Towards Zero: Ambitious Road Safety Targets and the Safe System Approach’, it envisages the adoption by governments of a vision of zero road fatalities and serious injuries. But to achieve that road systems must be “designed to expect and accommodate human error”.
The new ‘safe system approach’ is already being used in some countries, notably the Netherlands, Sweden and some Australian states. It ensures that, in the event of a crash, impact energies remain below the threshold likely to produce either death or serious injury.
Mr Dawson said: “While this approach still sees the road user as the weakest link in the transport chain – unpredictable and capable of error – it extends responsibility for road safety beyond the road user.
“It creates a holistic attitude where all those who are responsible for safety of the road transport system – users, vehicle manufacturers and road authorities – accept and act on their responsibility to make roads safe.”
The cost of handling British road crashes is £18 billion per year – 1.5% of GDP.
The figure includes the costs to emergency services and health and social care costs, particularly the costs of long term care to those disabled in road crashes.
However, it excludes the substantial disruption and economic cost of road accidents, which amount to many billions more.
The Campaign for Safe Road Design, of which RoadSafe is a member, aims to cut deaths and serious injuries on the road by one-third, saving the economy £6bn. It argues that if the UK Government invested in better road design – primarily in signs, lines, kerbing and barriers – up to 30 lives or serious injuries a day could be saved.
A campaign petition on the 10 Downing Street website – http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ saferoaddesign – calls on the Government to ‘make safe road design a national transport priority’ and Mr Dawson said: “It is along the lines set out in ‘Towards Zero’ that the Campaign for Safe Road Design will continue to push for change and road death reduction in the UK.”