ROAD DEATHS UP AS DRIVER ATTITUDES WORSEN
08 February 2007 - Safe Speed

Provisional figures released by Department for Transport today reveal a veryworrying trend in road deaths, showing a 1% rise from 3,177 to 3210.

The figures are the quarterly provisional estimates for period ending Q3 2006.

Safe Speed estimates that road deaths should be falling by between 4% and 5%,
based on various engineering and medical gains. In order to offset this benefit
''something else'' must be going badly wrong - and we know exactly what it is.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign
(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: ''Road deaths should not be rising. We know we''re
putting safer vehicles on the roads each year, we know we''re improving the
engineering of crash black spots and we know we''re getting better at post crash
care. The growth in traffic is nowhere near enough to offset these very
substantial gains.''

''I know exactly what''s happening - we have the wrong road safety policy and
it''s making our drivers worse. Speed cameras and ''speed kills'' policy is badly
affecting driver skills and especially driver attitudes.''

''This is a crisis in road safety - we must get back to policies that value
skills and attitudes and we must have policies that effectively police the
growing ''rogue driver'' problem.''

''Trends in serious injuries continue to appear to show an improvement, but last
year the British Medical Journal found that road crash hospitalisation hadn''t
fallen for a decade despite huge gains in the official ''serious injury''
statistics. This is ample evidence that the serious injury trend does NOT
represent a genuine improvement in road safety.''

www.safespeed.org.uk

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