December 2011 PACTS Newsletter

Event Date: 9:30 am March 23, 2012

Location: One Drummond Gate, Victoria, London SW1V 2QQ

Member Price: £150.00

Non-member Price: £200.00

This conference will look at the challenges for road safety over the coming years if we are to seek to achieve a British version of Vision Zero. Although the current environment for casualty reduction may seem daunting, we need to look beyond this to sketch out what more we can achieve and what research evidence we have to make progress. This conference will begin to map out the direction we need to take.

Event Date: 6:00 pm November 30, 2011

Location: London, Church House

In her lecture, Dr Anable took a very wide canvas attempting to bring together the road safety and sustainability agendas. She argued that road safety had achieved substantial behaviour change through both encouragement and regulation. Sustainable travel choices, however, had only encouragement as a means of achieving change. In the current climate road safety would need to achieve more through encouragement given the unwillingness of legislators to regulate further.

Secondly, she argued that “nudging” means getting people to make the right choice subliminally. Advertising and publicity are not examples of nudging since they are a positive intervention to achieve change.

Thirdly, she pointed to the need to align casualty and carbon reduction arguments when dealing with proposals to raise the motorway speed limit. Rather than focusing on the options available to individual drivers, the government should aim for better network management which would increase capacity, improve safety and tackle emissions caused by faster driving.

Link: http://bit.ly/uv55WY

The document at the link above is the report of an independent review led by Alan Cook and commissioned by the Secretary of State for Transport in April 2011. The review was asked to consider how best to achieve the Government’s objectives for operating, maintaining and enhancing the strategic road network.

Link: http://bit.ly/sBnSzq

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) has released its annual report for the operational period 2010. It is published in two sections; Section 1 covers the work of the RAIB in 2010, and Section 2 cover the status of recommendations as reported to RAIB. During 2010, the RAIB published 20 investigation reports, a Special Investigation report, 11 bulletins and started a further 18 investigations.

Link: http://bit.ly/fQrSqT

Nearly 200 rail transport regulations have been placed on the Red Tape Challenge website – a Government-wide site aimed at reducing bureaucracy. They will remain there for consultation for four weeks. The Challenge asks everyone whether they think that a regulation is well designed and provides vital protection or is badly designed, badly implemented or simply a bad idea.

Link: http://bit.ly/sBV2AX

Commenting on the publication by the Department for Transport this morning of provisional road casualty figures to June 2011, Robert Gifford, Executive Director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, said “Obviously it is good to know that in the year July 2010 to June 2011 road deaths overall were down. However, the good news disguises the fact that for the first two quarters of 2011 deaths actually rose.

“In January to March, the rise was 6% and in April to June it was 7%. While we should be careful about drawing too strong a conclusion from two quarters, this nevertheless should sound alarm bells for Ministers. The rise in deaths occurred at a time when the economy continued to flatline. While some of the overall fall in deaths over the last few years was related to the recession, this rise suggests that the key messages about safe road use are having less effect among road users. We must hope that the new strategic framework for road safety will help to confirm the government’s commitment to making roads safer for all classes of road user. Ministers need to give a firm lead on this issue, demonstrating political leadership.

“Also of concern is information in Table RAS45008 showing a steady rise in all injuries involving cyclists. These have risen in 9 of the last 14 quarters. When we saw similar rises in motorcycling casualties in the early 2000s, the government set up a Motorcycle Advisory Group to look at how to improve their safety. Perhaps we need a similar group to assess how to improve cycle safety and maintain the steady increase in cycle usage.”

The Rail Safety and Standards Board has published the following reports:

October 2011, Summary of Safety Performance report: http://bit.ly/sADkyr

The monthly SPAD Cat A and TPWS Report for October 2011: http://bit.ly/tyQWAa

All current safety performance reports can be found on the RSSB website at: http://bit.ly/gfzqap

Link: http://bit.ly/w1IQuu

The European Railway Agency has published the EU railway safety data for 2010.

Since data were first collected in the EU in 2006, the year 2010 can be seen as the safest on EU railways.

As well as encouraging and supporting the sharing of Britain’s expertise and knowledge, PACTS is committed to using the Decade of Action as an opportunity to build on existing European and international contacts and learn from experience from outside the UK. Therefore each month a publication from a different country will be featured on the Decade of Action website.

December 2011: SWOV, the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands has published a report on ‘Traffic offences and crashes: is there a relation?‘. The report found that vehicles that commit more than one offence per year are involved in crashes more frequently than vehicles that commit one offence per year. The study also showed that this growth factor increases exponentially with the offence frequency (the number of offences per year).

BILLS AND ACTS

Date: November 22, 2011

Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)

Link: http://bit.ly/vD5ffX

MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS

Date: November 7, 2011

The Secretary of State for Transport (Justine Greening)

Link: http://bit.ly/tNUoLY

Date: November 3, 2011

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)

Link: http://bit.ly/tJ9Qr3

PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS

“Parliamentary questions are tools that can be used by Members of Parliament to seek information or to press for action. They oblige Ministers to explain and defend the work, policy decisions and actions of their Departments.”

All transport safety parliamentary questions and PACTS comments can be viewed on the website.

This question was asked on week beginning 7th November.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many drivers are currently listed on the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency database who have more than 12 points on their licence and whose licences have not been removed due to a successful plea of personal hardship resulting from the loss of a driving licence.

Earl Attlee: This information is not held on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s database as the courts do not notify why someone with more than 12 penalty points is not disqualified. On 21 September 2011, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s records showed that 9,747 drivers in Great Britain have 12 points or more without disqualification.

In cases where a driver has accumulated 12 or more penalty points, a court can exercise its discretion and choose not to disqualify the driver.

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