The Government now frames its policy on road safety through the previously mentioned British Road Safety Statement. It has set priorities for tougher enforcement against drivers who speed, drink drive, take drugs or use their phones behind the wheel. There is also still an aim to protect vulnerable road users (cyclists and pedestrians) through infrastructure and vehicle improvements.
The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) is a registered charity which aims to inform MPs and Lords on air, rail and road safety issues. It set up an independent Transport Safety Commission which, in March 2015, published a report into the various legal framework and institutional responsibilities in the UK for transport safety across roads, railways and aviation. The executive summary is stark.
“There needs to be a long, hard look at our present arrangements for roads to take advantage of learning from the experience in the rail and aviation sectors and in the road safety management practices of other leading countries,” it says.
“The complex structure of responsibility for safety in the case of roads is far from transparent to the public and professionals alike. It is hardly surprising that accountability and leadership in road risk management can become diffuse. Currently there are no national casualty reduction targets for local roads in England. The balance of opinion we received was strongly that national targets are helpful and necessary.”
PACTS Executive Director David Davies says: “We’re connected to Parliament, and our focus is working with and advising MPs and the House of Lords to keep safety - mostly road safety - on their agenda. We’re not trying to speak to the public.
“Our overriding priority is to reinforce the message that road safety is not fixed or solved - it is still the biggest risk most of us face in our daily lives. It’s the biggest killer for young people aged 15 to 25. Although the UK has a good record, we absolutely need to do a lot more.”
In mid-March this year, PACTS was due to host a conference to discuss current collision investigation practice. The Chief Inspector of the Rail Accident Investigation Branch was one of the speakers. The agenda seems set to promote the notion of a more coordinated approach to investigation of serious road accidents and possibly a road accident investigation branch, to parallel those for rail, air and maritime.
Says Davies: “It’s on the cards. There is now a sort of regulator for the trunk road network. The Office of Rail Regulation is now the Office of Rail and Road. It encompasses a safety brief for trunk roads. Although the Department for Transport doesn’t have a UK-wide or even England-wide road safety casualty reduction target, it has set targets for Highways England in relation to the trunk road network. It’s quite a demanding target.”
In the British Road Safety Statement, the DfT outlines a number of activities to “help Highways England to move towards its target of reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured on the strategic road network by 40% by the end of 2020, and its aim of bringing that figure as close as possible to zero by 2040”.
“They probably aren’t going to meet that,” says Davies. “I’ve heard senior police collision investigators say: ‘What we do is essentially with a view to prosecution - has someone been speeding or drink driving? What we are not doing is gathering information across the piece. We’re not gathering these investigations together and saying ‘look, if only this vehicle was designed differently, or this road was designed differently, or information had got across to drivers, then we could prevent casualties’.
“We feel there needs to be a more systematic rigorous learning process, at least from the fatal accidents. We’re not suggesting every bump and shunt should be investigated - a bit like air and rail, in that they don’t investigate every accident. They look at what happened and ask if there is something special about it, some learning we can get out of it.
“We are now getting to the numbers where that is feasible. 1,700 deaths on the road each year, which is around 1,600 fatal accidents - it is not impossible to investigate all of those. Indeed, the police do, so if we could have some kind of process of transferring the information from the police to a learning centre...”
The DfT already runs a scheme called Road Accident in-Depth Studies (RAIDS). Phase 1 began in 2012, during which more than 1,000 collisions were investigated. A second phase is now under way which will run until 2019. Investigators attend accident scenes while the emergency services are still present, with the aim of using the data gathered to inform effective policy-making.
“RAIDS is good and all about learning, but we’d like to see that bigger and more systematic,” continues Davies. “I think we should be getting down to 1,000 , certainly by 2025.
“Driver behaviour is difficult to influence. Exhorting people to be more careful doesn’t work unless it is backed up by enforcement. It is therefore about safer vehicles, safer road designs, segregated cycle routes, safer junctions. The new mantra is safe system - the thinking behind that is: it is really difficult to kill yourself even if you make a mistake. You accept people will make mistakes, and you design around the frailties of the human body.
“We do see really good practice in the railway industry. We are trying to spread some of the rail safety mentality and standards to road. In rail it is not acceptable to think ‘a whole bunch of people will die this year’, and live with that. The assumption is you will try and prevent them all. In road there is still an assumption that ‘1,700 might all die next year and we hope it will come down a bit’.”
Why?
“Most drivers on the roads are individuals who are not under the control of an employer or anybody. If you have a licence, you can drive. Even for those driving for work, health and safety standards are much less rigorously applied. On the railways someone is accountable - there is a human psychology that comes into it. Our attitudes to risk are not necessarily consistent. People are prepared to tolerate risk when they think they are in control. If they are in a train or a plane and someone else is in charge, they expect absolute safety.”
