Making Road Safety Pay

4 November 2014

“We can no longer accept sudden, violent road death as such a significant cause of premature loss of life. The UK government must design, plan and legislate to put safety on roads on the same footing as safety in the air, sea or on rail.” This is the  message given by Road Safety Foundation Chairman, Lord Whitty launching a new report  Making Road Safety Pay,

The report was commissioned by the third largest UK motor insurer Ageas UK. and published by The Road Safety Foundation. The report makes seven key recommendations which aim to change the national focus on road safety over the next decade.

These will act as a platform for all road safety stakeholders to discuss and develop new practical measures that will set the UK on a track to achieving zero road deaths within the next decade and reduce the cost of road crashes to the economy estimated at 2% of GDP.

The recommendations include:

1. The Department for Transport should develop a ten year ‘Towards Zero’ strategy for road deaths.
 

2. The Government should pilot innovative Social Impact Bonds (‘Safety Bonds’) to finance new safety programmes.

3. The Government should introduce a zero Insurance Premium tax (IPT) rate for insured vehicles fitted with a telematics unit for drivers under the age of 25, based on a business case that includes data from real driving experience given to the charity through Ageas’s partnership with RoadSafe partner ingenie.

4. Britain should develop a National Older Driver Strategy and create a taskforce to implement this plan.

5. Low speed Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) should be standard on all new cars. The EU should mandate low speed AEB as standard on new cars from 2017.

6. Minimum inbuilt safety levels of 4-stars are needed for the busiest national roads and minimum 3-stars for all other national roads by 2025.

7. Establish an independent Road Safety Inspectorate and raise the safety of local authority ‘A’ roads to a 3-star minimum level by 2030.

“Advancing technology means safety on the roads can be designed as a single system,” said Lord Whitty. “Modern car and road design properly implemented and working together is capable of protecting us at a level which was unimaginable just two decades ago.

“Designing and implementing this ‘Safe Road Transport System’ means a new approach to sharing and accepting responsibility: drivers for driving safely; vehicle manufacturers for providing safe vehicles; and road authorities for providing safe road infrastructure.”