Since 1926, 500,000 people have died in collisions on our roads, more than have died from war in the same period. Even today, roughly 30,000 people are killed or seriously injured every year. Our progress in reducing these numbers has all but fizzled out. It’s clear that our approach to road safety is simply not working.
The UK’s road safety system is reactive, under resourced and reliant on overly simplistic historical data. Safety interventions come predominantly as a response to collisions, rather than as a proactive measure to prevent them.
Communities know their roads: they use them every day, witnessing near miss after near miss. They know that on certain roads, if nothing changes, sooner or later someone will get hurt. Yet, when they raise their concerns, they’re so often told that the number of people being killed or seriously injured in their area doesn’t meet the threshold for speed cameras or other meaningful interventions. In effect, they’re told that they must wait for someone to be killed before the road can be made safe.
This isn’t a one-off occurrence, but something I encounter wherever I go in my constituency of Rossendale and Darwen. In each case residents see close calls daily but are told that the statistics don’t merit action, or in the rare cases they do, are told that there is no money for interventions anyway!
This is nonsensical, decades behind the methods employed internationally and out of line with the ‘Vision Zero’ strategy that so many councils have sworn to. Ultimately, this costs money and worst of all, lives.
If we want to be serious about saving people’s lives, we must move towards a proactive, community-led approach to road safety, which is informed by statistics but not led by them.
Under this model, rather than claiming that a centrally held database knows best, we trust the instincts, experiences and wishes of those who use these roads every day. Instead of waiting around until enough people have been hurt to merit an intervention, we proactively identify high risk areas, and we act.
Countries around the world provide brilliant examples of how we could do this. Both Rotterdam and the Hague use an algorithm to determine the likelihood of crashes on their roads. Combining a range of factors, including past crashes, traffic flow and the features of the road, it creates a risk rating. Yet crucially, this rating informs rather than entirely leads the local authorities’ decisions. Community experience and input is a key factor, with the authorities paying close attention to the volume and severity of complaints each road receives. Out of this community-led, data-informed model, the local authorities choose where and how to proactively intervene.
Along with a shift to this sort of preventative model, there are many proactive and low-cost actions we could take to shift the numbers. As HGVs are the deadliest vehicles on the road, we could tighten regulations on their use, making companies liable for collisions involving their lorries. There also are major gains to be made by improving the quality of tyres on our roads, with MOTs annually flagging over a million tyres as actively dangerous due to their poor condition. A serious look at targeted measures for new young drivers, who account for a massive 16% of all fatalities, could also have a significant impact.
Yet, some roads will only become safe with genuine safe system interventions. We can implement these through establishing clearer and protected cycle lanes, constructing safe footways or building new traffic lights and crossings where they’re needed. We also can’t understate the power of average speed cameras, with an average drop of 36.4% in people being killed or seriously injured where they’re installed. In some cases, as with the A588 in Lancashire, average speed cameras have even resulted in an 86% reduction in collisions. The cost of these interventions has decreased dramatically with new technologies. The College of Policing estimates a cost benefit ratio of 1:3 for average speed cameras and so upfront cost should not be seen as a barrier. We don’t have to live with these accidents forever. If we act, implementing measures like these, we can save lives.
With a new Road Safety Strategy currently being compiled by the Government, we finally have the opportunity to create a modern, preventative road safety system. We don’t have to be stuck with an outdated, ineffective model that ignores community voices, over relies on imperfect statistics and ultimately, fails to protect us. There is another way. The time to act is now.
To save lives, we must move towards a community-led approach to road safety
