June 2012 PACTS Newsletter

Welcome to the June newsletter.

Event Date: 9:30 am June 13, 2012

Location: Brunel University

This conference is being organised jointly by PACTS and the Criminal Justice Research Centre within Brunel Law School. Given the focus in the Strategic Framework for Road Safety on achieving compliance with road traffic law, it will offer an opportunity to review the evidence about the effectiveness of methods to encourage people to comply with the law. It will look at all aspects of the process from enforcement through to the effectiveness of sentencing

Event date: October 2 and 3, 2012

Location: Edinburgh

At the TISPOL conference, you will hear the current thinking and developments in road safety and enforcement from across Europe and beyond. There will also be a selection of road safety and enforcement exhibitors displaying their products and willing to offer advice and assistance in relation to their potential solutions.

Event date: 8 -12 October 2012

Location: London

The theme of the 12th Symposium will be ‘Working together to improve safety and performance at level crossings’.  The event in London will also consider trespass on the railway, accessed from level crossings, as an additional safety issue.  We would welcome representation from experts in highway design and safety, police and other emergency services.

The Trustees of PACTS have begun the search for a replacement for Robert Gifford with the aim of appointing a new Executive Director to take over running the organisation from January 1 2013. Details of the post and of the application process are attached.

Robert Gifford said “It has been a great privilege (and hugely enjoyable) to run the organisation since May 1994. However, I think it is now time to hand over to another person. I look forward to recruiting and working with my successor”.

The government has published a response to Alan Cook’s independent review which examined whether the Government had the right approach to operating, maintaining and enhancing the Strategic Road Network.

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has set out its plan for this financial year, focused on bringing the rail industry together to ensure high levels of safety, delivering more for customers and reducing costs.

Consultation period: 17/04/2012 – 22/06/2012

Reducing the number and the severity of road traffic injuries is one of the strategic objectives outlined in the Policy Orientation on Road Safety 2011-2020 and a priority for EU action. Accordingly, the Commission is developing a comprehensive strategy of action concerning road traffic injuries and emergency services, with the help of all relevant actors. Initially, it will seek to find a common understanding of definitions and concepts relating to casualties (in particular, the definition of serious and slight injuries), improve data collection and identify courses of action to improve prevention and intervention, including their socio-economic impact.

The Road Safety Foundation has published a report looking at the safety of the English motorway network in the context of a potential raising of the motorway speed limit to 80mph. The report, “Unfit for 80”, concludes that “Only a handful of motorways are lightly trafficked enough with adequate run-off protection to entertain 80mph as a legal default speed”. It further recommends a number of key measures to deliver economic benefits including bringing all motorways up to a minimum 4-star standard by 2020 and installing full motorway control systems where flows exceed 85,000 vehicles per day by 2020.

The International Labour Office has published a paper on Working Time, Health and Safety.

The Department for Transport will publish the main results of Reported Road Casualties GB 2011 on Thursday the 28th June. Provisional estimates for Q1 2012 will be published on the 2nd August and the full annual report for 2011 on the 27th September.

The Rail Safety and Standards Board has published the following:

The monthly SPAD Cat A and TPWS Report for April 2012

The monthly SPAD Cat A and TPWS Report for March 2012

As well as encouraging and supporting the sharing of Britain’s expertise and knowledge, PACTS is committed to using the Decade of Action for Road Safety 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.

June 2012: The paper Reducing Drink Driving in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Challenges and Opportunities was written by Stewart, Silcock and Wegman and published in Traffic Injury Prevention. It assesses the problem of drink driving in low- and middle-income countries where 90 percent of the world’s fatalities on the roads occur and where the dangers inherent in drink driving are exacerbated by infrastructure that is less protective, vehicles that are less safe, and the presence of many vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, motor scooter riders, and motorcyclists).

COMMITTEE REPORT

The Transport Committee has published a report looking at the proposals for pilot flight time limitations published by the European Aviation Safety Agency. Rightly, the committee identifies that the longer periods of night flying that may be permitted under EASA could put passenger safety at risk.

DEBATES

Date: May 18, 2012

Viscount Simon (Labour)

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 here.

This question was asked on week beginning 21st May:

Jim Fitzpatrick: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when she expects the data for (a) seat belt wearing and (b) mobile telephone use by drivers to be available for (i) 2010 and (ii) 2011. [106656]

Mike Penning: Data on seat belt wearing and mobile phone use by drivers for 2010 and 2011 have not been collected and there are currently no plans to collect this data in the immediate future.

Details of recorded offences for failing to wear a seat belt and using a handheld mobile phone while driving can be found on the Home Office and Ministry of Justice websites:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/criminal-justice-stats/motoring-tables.xls

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/police-research/immigration-tabs-q4-2011/fixed-penalty-notice-1011-tabs?view=Binary

PACTS comments: Following on from the question which featured in last month’s newsletter, this parliamentary question confirms that the Department for Transport has ceased to collect this data. Our attention was drawn by Oliver Carsten to the issue of seatbelt and mobile phone use surveys no longer being carried out when he spoke at the PACTS conference Aiming for Zero in March. PACTS would like to see these surveys continued in some form.

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