Casualty statistics out today confirmed what everyone working in road safety feared: a rise in road deaths and serious injuries for the first time in 17 years, a dramatic reversal in the significant downward trend we have been seeing. It means last year 51 more lives were lost too soon, needlessly and violently, on British roads compared to the year before, while 464 more suffered the horror of a serious injury. For each of these casualties, many more friends and loved ones will be enduring trauma, anguish and upheaval.
The biggest increases were deaths and serious injuries among the most vulnerable road users – those we should be working hard to protect – pedestrians and cyclists.
This terrible, shameful news comes just over a year after the government published its strategic framework for road safety: a document intended to set the direction and priorities for national and local work to make our roads safer. At the time, Brake criticised this document for its abject lack of ambition and decisive action on key road safety issues. The framework includes no targets for road casualty reduction, abandoning a policy that has been internationally shown to help drive progress in road safety. The ‘vision’ at its heart is about maintaining the status quo: retaining Britain’s position as a world leader in road safety. The measures it contains to improve road safety are few in number and, with perhaps one exception (relating to tackling drug driving), relatively minor in scale and scope. Several fundamental road safety issues receive little or no mention.
We are now in the appalling position of seeing road casualties rise again after decades of progress. It should not require heart-breaking statistics like this to spur the government into action – since every death and injury on our roads is preventable, and one too many – but we sincerely hope this is the effect they will have. Road casualties are devastating to the families and communities affected, but they are also a serious economic burden, amounting to an estimated £33billion annually, so investment in road safety is just that. Effective road safety measures pay for themselves, often many times over. They can also benefit public health and the environment, especially when it comes to making it safer for people to walk and cycle in their own communities. But despite the many social benefits that progress in road safety can deliver, it appears to have been sidelined politically.
The statistics published today must surely serve as a wake up call to government: that complacency around road safety is unacceptable because it comes at a horrendous price. That we need progressive, decisive action on key issues like young driver safety, drink driving, and protecting pedestrians and cyclists. And that to not act amounts to an abhorrent betrayal of all those who will suffer the carnage of road crashes.
Read Brake’s news release commenting on today’s casualty statistics
Brake about Brake’s campaigns calling for action on road safety
Read the government’s casualty statistics report
Sad to hear this news but not surprised.
When will governments and authorities realise that the key to reducing these figures is driver education.
It is utterly rediculous to have a system where you take a 30 minute driving test at 17 and that’s it; go and see your doctor when you’re 70!
My proposal is a two stage practical test, stage one as now to allow for limited independent driving, then a second test after six months of at least one hour, encompassing ALL road types with a tighter fault limit.
After this ALL drivers to have their driving knowledge and abilities assessed every 5-10 years.
Driving and riding on the roads is taken too much for granted.
You can have all the traffic lights, road signs and speed limits you like, all you are doing is treating the symptom, not the cause.
I say again, education is the key. Yes it will cost money to implement but set that against the huge costs of dealing with the aftermath of these needless tragedies and you will save in the long term.
It’s not a vote winner but it would be a life saver.
Come on Cameron, be brave bold and decisive.
I have to disagree. I think most people are capable of driving safely for a test no matter how tough it is. It’s how they behave when they’re on their own after passing the test which is killing people. Some people who are capable of driving safely in traffic just don’t have the right personality to be trusted with something as dangerous to others as a car. However, I don’t think the government would ever get away with discriminating against people this way.
I only cared about road safety after nearly being killed several times on a bicycle and on foot. How do you teach that?
There is only one way to significantly reduce road casualties that will work and that is to force ISA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_speed_adaptation) on all cars. The biggest reduction in road deaths came when the price of fuel increased which made a lot of drivers drive more slowly and carefully to save themselves money. ISA systems cannot be late for work, they don’t get angry, they don’t listen to racey music and they do not get distracted. ISA systems do not have emotions which is clearly extremely dangerous in a motorist. It’s not complicated technology; it could have been done in the 60s well before satellites were about by fitting transponders to street lights. However, as virtually everybody I have been in a car with thinks it totally acceptable to drive 10mph over the speed limit I don’t imagine it would be very popular.
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Surely the most effective way to reduce the number of accidents is to reduce the number of cars on our streets? Most local car journeys could be biked or walked instead. We just need to structure the local environment to make that the easier option. Not rocket science.