ROAD SAFETY IS A SHARED RESPONSIBILITY SAYS SAFE SPEED
27 January 2005 - Safe Speed

New figures from Direct Line highlight pedestrian crashes and dangerous attitudes. Official policy fosters bad attitudes says Safe Speed.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign commented as follows:

''All road users are responsible for their own safety and for the safety of others. It''s extremely unfortunate that modern policy seems to be setting road user groups against one another. It''s never a good idea to rely on the good behaviour of others for safety, yet pedestrians blame drivers and drivers blame pedestrians.

We must not lose sight of the fact that we have the safest roads in the world. We can use established principles to ''nudge'' road safety in the right direction - safer every year. But modern policy is giving out some very confusing and misleading messages and making matters worse.

The most important message of all is individual and equal responsibility for all road users. Drivers must take care. Pedestrians must take care. We all have to look out for each other.

It''s a worrying fact that most pedestrian collisions are caused by the pedestrian. I believe that we should run public information films warning pedestrians of the danger of careless road crossing and especially drunken road crossing. If we lay out the facts and encourage care and responsibility I believe we can make a positive difference quite easily.

But most important of all is that we have to get away from the idea that safety is someone else''s responsibility. It isn''t. We''re all equally responsible.''

www.safespeed.org.uk

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