DEATHS DOWN AT LAST - A TRIUMPH OF ENGINEERING OVER POLICY.
30 June 2005 - Safe Speed

Figures released today by the Department for Transport (DfT) reveal a very long awaited reduction in road deaths.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: ''The fall in road deaths is clearly a triumph of engineering over policy. In fact bad road safety policy has been making our roads more dangerous for over a decade. This welcome fall will undoubtedly be attributed to policy, but since policy is substantially unchanged from last year when deaths rose, that wouldn''t make any sense at all would it?''

''Road safety in the UK is being mismanaged and widely misunderstood. The modern emphasis on vehicle speeds is so wide of the mark that it would be laughable if it wasn''t so tragic. And ''tragic'' is indeed the word, because if former trends in road safety had continued throughout the speed camera decade we''d be down to about 2,000 road deaths each year by now. We know we have substantial and beneficial road safety gains going on, including:

* Improvements in vehicle safety (thought to make fatalities 4% less likely each year as vehicle safety improvements ripple into the national fleet.)

* Improvements in road engineering (accident black spot treatments, and roads development transferring traffic to better roads (e.g. bypasses)). A good working estimate for the benefit of roads engineering is around 2% per annum.)

* Improvements in post crash medical care (thought to save more lives at the roadside by about 1% per annum).

These benefits need to be offset against the growth in traffic currently running at about 1.5% per annum.

I believe that we would see road deaths fall by between 5 and 7% per annum with no ''policy intervention'' at all - just as they did throughout the seventies, eighties and early nineties. But deaths hadn''t fallen for a decade despite massive policy intervention (reduced speed limits and speed cameras especially). This indicates with crystal clarity that the policy failed in its stated purpose of saving lives.''

Official road safety targets are based on ''Killed and Seriously Injured'' (KSI) figures. But it is widely known and acknowledged that the recorded serious injury figures only roughly reflect road safety because there are large and variable numbers of road injuries that are neither reported to the police nor recorded in the statistics.

We note that road deaths are down in both the areas without camera partnerships. Down in Durham (24%), and down in North Yorkshire (9%) (both by more than the average change).

Road deaths were up by a shameful 18% in North Wales, where arch speed camera proponent Richard Brunstrom is Chief Constable. Wales overall saw road deaths rise by 16%.

www.safespeed.org.uk

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