ROAD SAFETY BILL: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY
30 November 2004 - Safe Speed

Safe Speed says the new Road Safety Bill, published today, is a missed opportunity.

It is more of the disappointingly limited modern thinking in road safety that has lead to road deaths not falling significantly for a decade despite huge ongoing improvements in vehicle safety, road engineering and post accident paramedic care. These three factors are known to be far greater than the growth in traffic so road deaths should be falling.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign comments: ''It''s very disappointing to see that road safety thinking remains stalled. This bill contains a series of administrative and technology updates which are fair enough, but we are very disappointed not to see any evidence of real forward thinking.''

Key missed opportunities are:

* There''s nothing to help drivers improve. We need carrots as well as sticks.

* There''s nothing that will tend to help the police to identify risky driving. Clearly we have to identify them before we can help them or punish them.

* There''s precious little that will help us to re-educate risky drivers before they crash.

* There''s absolutely nothing to help separate largely unnecessary technical offences from real safety violations.

Paul continues: ''The critical failure in official road safety policy stems from the excessive emphasis on speed limits. Official thinking is beginning to recognise the injustice that results from too many speeding convictions, and that is why graduated penalties are proposed. They have not realised that the injustice really arises because it is absolutely impossible to determine the safety of a speed by simple reference to the speed limit. Instead it is vital to refer to the conditions at the time of the offence.''

All drivers are licenced to use deadly speed - 30mph is our lowest widespread speed limit, yet 30mph is a deadly speed. It is our responsibility as drivers to use speed wisely and by and large we are very good at it. Yet in the last official survey 59% of drivers at sample sites were exceeding the 30mph speed limit. Clearly this is not a problem because the average driver goes over 150 years before he causes an injury accident.

Safe Speed urges the government: ''Measure what is important, don''t make important what you can measure.''

Safe Speed warns the government: ''You can''t measure safe driving in miles per hour''

Safe Speed reminds the government: ''The competent and careful actions of a majority of responsible people should obviously be considered legal''

www.safespeed.org.uk

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