Speech by Paul Clark MP to PACTS' conference

At PACTS' autumn conference 'Beyond 2010: The Challenges Ahead' Paul Clark MP, Minister in charge of road safety gave the keynote speech.

Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me here today to this important event.

Over the past decade we’ve made tremendous progress in reducing road casualties. Thanks to a concerted programme of education, enforcement and engineering, to say nothing of the dedication of road safety campaigners and professionals like you, very many lives have been saved.

But as everyone here in this room knows, we cannot rest on the laurels of past achievement. Next year, our ten year strategy for road safety is comes to an end. We’ve achieved a great deal, and there is still more for us to do.

To help us determine the way forward, we launched the Safer Way consultation - to look to 2010 and beyond. Many of you took the time to drive the debate forward and to help us formulate the solutions that will cut the annual toll of deaths and serious injuries on our roads still further.

I’m, pleased to say, there was a good reaction; we received 1358 written responses and over 900 responses via the online questionnaire before the consultation closed in July.

We’ve listened very carefully to what you said and our aim is to publish the new road safety strategy by end of 2009. And our vision is to have 'Safest roads in the world'.

Many respondents were concerned that the words ‘road users’ and ‘vehicles’ didn’t appear in our vision statement, although this was what we had actually intended through the measurement of deaths per head of population.

Other suggestions included “the World’s Safest Roads and Road Users” and “the World’s Safest Road Travel”.

Some respondents felt greater clarity was needed between national and local targets with regard to cycling and pedestrians. And I should make it clear that we only ever intended the deaths target and the pedestrian and cyclist target to be measured nationally.
There were also concerns as to whether the death and serious injury targets are demanding enough, especially as we have now met all our casualty reduction targets for 2010.
As you know, the 2008 casualty figures showed a great improvement. In particular, the 14% reduction in deaths was unprecedented.
Whilst these are extraordinary economic times, the fall in deaths far outstrips the 1% fall in traffic and the marginal falls in average speeds on motorways and dual carriageways.
Realistically, we cannot expect a 14% annual reduction in deaths to be sustained. But we do need to make a judgement as to whether it is indicative of a continued downward trend in road deaths or just a single exceptional year.
Everyone involved in road safety, including professionals like you, deserve an enormous credit for this drop in casualties. But we do need to reflect carefully on what this means for a casualty reduction target for 2020.
For example, I know there was a lot of feedback from professionals on the target to reduce death and serious injury among children and young people. Very simply, many people didn’t want a single target to cover what they saw as the distinct groups of child pedestrians, cyclists and vehicle passengers and the older teenagers who are driving cars or riding motorcycles.

Obviously, we need to carefully consider such consistent feedback from the profession. However, we also need to bear in mind that our targets do cover different sections of the population. The current child target has proved a useful driver for change, despite encompassing pre-school and teenage pre-driver populations, who respond to very different road safety measures.

Protecting motorcyclists was identified as key safety risk in our consultation document.  But the feedback suggests that we don’t propose action to address this risk. And driving for work wasn’t specifically identified as a risk, but many felt it should have been. That said nobody seemed to be able to offer “magic solutions” to effectively target either of these groups.

Nevertheless, we have to remember that both driving for work and motorcycling take place within the mainstream of road use. The measures that we take in terms of education, engineering and enforcement help to improve the safety of both by default.  But I believe we can certainly do more to communicate the actions that we’re taking to improve safety for both these groups and I’m confident that we can improve the road safety record for both.

It was interesting to see that there was a great deal of enthusiasm for 20 mph limits in roads that are residential or have shops and schools in them. However, there was concern regarding the ability to deliver on this measure because of the engineering required and the associated costs.

Clearly, we need to frame our guidance to local authorities on 20 mph limits and zones very carefully, setting out the research evidence into the impact on road safety that signed 20 mph limits and engineered 20 mph zones can bring and acknowledging that local authorities have wider responsibilities for the environment and for the quality of people’s lives, which they will also need to  take account of in determining their local speed limits.

In contrast, opinion varied on our proposals to review speed limits on rural single carriageways and reduce limits from the national limit of 60 mph where the casualty risk was high.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England mounted a campaign to reduce the national speed limit to 50mph for all single carriageways.  This was backed by over 700 CPRE members. However, local authorities, whilst having concerns over cost of signing 50 mph limits, generally supported the proposed targeted approach to reducing speed limits on these types of roads.

With regard to improving road user behaviour our recent consultation papers have focused on those who break the drink-driving rules and speed limits. Thanks to many years of effective enforcement, stringent penalties, and hard hitting advertising campaigns, drink drivers represent only a small minority. Yet these utterly irresponsible drivers still account for one sixth of all road deaths in this country and we must root them out.

Speed is also a killer. We want to see speeding become as unacceptable as drink-driving. There are still far too many drivers who regularly break the limits. That’s why we consulted on introducing, a higher 6-point fixed penalty for extreme speeders, with no graduation in fixed penalty fines.

The vast majority of those responding to the consultation wanted to see more enforcement of road traffic law and more police to help in that task. THINK! Advertising will also drive home the message. And we remain committed to using and speed cameras.

Cameras are not cash driven. They are not a tax. They have one purpose and one purpose only - and that is to reduce speeding where there is a history of accidents or where there is community concern about speeding.

As far as I’m concerned, the best camera is one that doesn't issue a single ticket as it means people are driving safely and within the speed limit. Drivers who abide by the speed limit, and therefore don’t put other road users at risk, have nothing to fear from cameras. Only those irresponsible enough to break the law pay penalties, just as other lawbreakers do.

And evaluations from around the world have shown that cameras bring huge road safety benefits. They reduce vehicle speeds, they reduce accidents, they reduce deaths and they reduce serious injuries.

Our own National Safety Camera Programme underwent an independent four-year evaluation, the report being published in 2005. It found a 42% reduction in people killed or seriously injured at camera sites across the 38 partnership areas. In short, they save lives.

And as you know, we’re also using average speed cameras to slow down traffic on key sections of our road network – either where there is a history of collisions along a stretch of road or in motorway road works. Early evidence suggests they can deliver a 50% reduction in deaths and serious injuries.

Cameras are just one example of how technology can help road safety. There are many others. Huge advances are being made in vehicle safety for example. Respondents to the Safer Way consultation expressed a desire to see incentives for take-up of new technologies and for safety technologies to be reflected in insurance premiums.

However, people also felt that we shouldn’t become too focused on car occupants. They argued there were as many benefits to be reaped from greater pedestrian protection.

This said, although there are concerns with an over reliance on technology and its impact on driving standards, there was also some enthusiasm for a voluntary system of Intelligent Speed Adaptation.

On improving delivery in the road safety sector - respondents wanted more clarity on the roles of the Delivery Board along with the Independent Expert Panel and reporting arrangements. They also wanted to see wider membership for Delivery Board, including industry and pressure groups.

This event is billed as "Beyond 2010, the challenges ahead" conference. Our primary concern is of course, our own roads. But I think we should also look beyond our own shores – to not only learn from the experience others, but also to share our knowledge and success in road safety.

With that in mind, I recently attended the TISPOL Conference, a major European Road Safety event, recently held earlier this month in London. TISPOL was established by the traffic police forces of the EU in order to improve road safety and law enforcement on the roads of Europe.  Its focus is a reduction in the number of people being killed and seriously injured on Europe's roads.

And the Department has participated in events such as the eSafety Challenge, an annual event aimed at promoting public awareness of life saving technologies and their benefits.

And, importantly, I will be attending this year's Global Road Safety Conference in Moscow in November. This is aimed at tackling road deaths at a global level.  The levels of road crashes in most industrialized countries are falling, but in developing countries the situation is worsening with deaths increasing.

Every year more than 1.17 million people die in road crashes around the world. The majority these deaths, around 70 percent, occur in developing countries. Sixty-five percent of deaths involve pedestrians and 35 percent of pedestrian deaths are children.
Over 10 million are crippled or injured each year. And it has been estimated, unless urgent action is taken, that at least 6 million more will die and 60 million will be injured during the next 10 years in developing countries. [Source: World Bank]

So just as we are looking beyond 2010 and for ways to reduce casualties still further, I believe we must also look beyond our own shores and share our expertise and successes with other nations.

In the meantime, I’m grateful for the responses we received to the consultation. Professionals, pressure groups and the public seized the opportunity to debate road safety at this important juncture.

We are now reflecting on all that you have told us. We intend to produce a strategy by the end of the year which reflects the conclusions from the Safer Way consultation and the previous consultation on Compliance with road traffic law. And I am confident that we will have a credible approach to achieving a substantial reduction casualties in the coming decade, one that not only you, the professionals, but road users too will buy into.

Thank you.

(This speech represented existing departmental policy but the words may not have been the same as those used by the Minister.)