A series of presentations from national road safety stakeholders covering the latest thinking with regard to ‘enforcement’, ‘education’, ‘engineering’ (roads and vehicles) and ‘evidence’.
Speakers
Opening addresses (12.45 – 1.15pm):
- Liz Brooker MBE, Chair, Road Safety GB (by video)
- David Davies, Executive Director, PACTS
- Jesse Norman MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, DfT (by video)
Routes to success – the 4 ‘E’s (1.15 – 3pm):
- Dawn Lauder, Head of Marketing & Communications, DfT
- Dave Baldwin, Head of Insight, Thatcham Research
- ACC Steve Barry, Sussex Police & NPCC
- Alison Hernandez, Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
- Philippa Young, Group Manager Transport Planning, Traffic and Road Safety, Warwickshire County Council
- Adrian Davis, Professor of Transport and Health, Edinburgh Napier University
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14.45 – Adrian Davis, Professor of Transport and Health, Edinburgh Napier University
Professor Adrian Davis took up his current post in September 2018 and is based at the Transport Research Institute, Scotland’s largest academic transport group.
Presentation: Co-creating demand for evidence based road safety practice – it’s down to us
Road safety must link with public health
The bounded reality triad
- Evidence overpowered by politics/ideology
- We need to get hold of research that practitioners don’t have at their fingertips
What is the point of universities that are just castles in the sky?
Researchers need to have impact…they must connect with practitioners
Where do you look for research evidence?
- The knowledge stockpile of what works is significant
- Why are we not looking at the academic literature?
Essential evidence on a page
- Dejargonise academic papers
- We’ve paid for this research, why aren’t we using it?
14.30 – Philippa Young, Group Manager Transport Planning, Traffic and Road Safety, Warwickshire County Council
With more than 25 years’ experience in the road safety profession, Philippa Young has managed both safety engineering and road safety ETP teams, as well as school travel planning teams in local authorities across the country.
Presentation: Future of road safety education
How can we better equip ourselves for the future?
It doesn’t matter who delivers road safety education as long as it is evidence based and evaluated.
National barriers:
- Funding – a degradation of the importance of road safety at a national level
- The removal of national road safety targets
Local barriers:
- 80% of local authorities report reduced funding
- As partners we continue to compete for time and resources
What can we do?
Local action plan and local targets and find local political champion
Need to pool resources & work with partner agencies
Stop competing, especially in schools
Look at who is getting in the door and hook into them
Evaluation:
- Must not waste resources on the nice and easy to dos
- We should look for help to gather evidence
- Need to be clear about outputs & objectives
- Stop reinventing the wheel
- I cannot stress the importance of evaluation enough
- Evaluation costs, but it is an essential element
Funding:
- Learn to talk to engineering teams
- Grant funding – spend time looking at them
- Road Safety Trust – keen to further support initiatives at a local level
- Road Safety GB – aspires to provide grants to members
‘We must expand our horizons and become more creative with our solutions’
Stop doing the ‘nice to dos’
If we cannot identify the need for an intervention, why should we fund it?
14.15 – Alison Hernandez, Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
Alison Hernandez is the police and crime commissioner for Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly and leads on road safety for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.
Presentation
‘Our communities want to help with road safety’
For the first time, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) has convened a national Portfolio Group looking at road safety as a key focus
Road safety is a cause for national concern – in 2017, the societal cost of road traffic crashes was £35bn
Innovative work taken forward by the Office for Data Analytics, funded by Police and Crime Commissioners… building a comprehensive picture of road risk – including collisions, near miss and speeding events – by working with partners
More investment needed in enforcement
- Fines from road traffic offences should be invested directly into local road safety
- I am calling on the Government, to increase road traffic fixed penalty notices and for that money to be reinvested into local road safety
- This is for all traffic offences, not just speeding
- A poll to gauge public support – launched today
‘I think the fine for speeding offences should increase’
‘Speeders don’t like to get caught, but speeding is dangerous’
What next?
- Develop APCC policy positions on key areas
- Convene a rural road safety task and finish group
- Encourage the sharing of best practice – Op Snap, Close Pass and Driving for Better Business
DfT has £100k fund to get Op Snap running across the country
Would you like the fines & penalties from speeding to go toward local #RoadSafety measures? 🚗#HaveYourSay here > https://t.co/W81vCGRmNO#NRSC2018 https://t.co/MYUEZNGZgg
— Devon & Cornwall PCC (@DC_PCC) November 27, 2018
14.00 – ACC Steve Barry, Sussex Police & NPCC
Steve has been with Sussex Police since the start of his career in 1993. He has predominantly worked in uniform policing across all parts of Sussex and more recently has focused on specialist operational policing such as roads, firearms and public order.
Presentation: Surrey and Sussex – Policing Together
Policing our roads together – working together to achieve:
- Safe roads, free from harm
- Secure roads free from the threat of serious crime and terrorism
- Efficient roads that promote public confidence and satisfaction
National roads policing principles and delivery
- Safe roads (includes criminality, a growing issue)
- Safe speeds (intelligent enforcement)
- Safe road users (risk-based approach)
- Safe vehicles (technology)
- Post-crash response (crash investigation)
Reductions in Road Policing Officers
- In 2010 the Home Office cut police budgets by 18%
- Between 2010 and 2014, the UK has seen a 27% reduction in the number of specialist road traffic police on the roads (falling from 5,338 to 3,901) outside of London.
- The numbers of roads policing officers subsequently dropped to 2,643 in 2017 – halved since 2010.
Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs)
- Randomisation of locations and times of enforcement should be used to increase the perceived risk of detection
- For future evidence based policy decisions, police should consider recording enforcement activities, in terms of hours of enforcement carried out, and their locations
- Appropriate media and educational campaigns should be considered alongside any enforcement strategies to ensure the biggest and farthest reaching effects
Do roads policing cops make a difference – yes
Self enforcement through education
- Very important children and young people are involved with road safety
- Provokes an emotional response
- Children will pester parents
Socially engineered self-enforcement
- Public participation in enforcement
- Community Speed Watch (can produce really good (educational) results)
What is Proportionate Enforcement Technology?
- Speed cameras/average speed cameras
‘I’d put an average speed camera on every corner’
‘Should have a diversionary course for mobile phone offences’
Covert roads policing – ‘I think we need to be more sneaky’
13.45 – Dave Baldwin, Head of Insight, Thatcham Research
Since joining Thatcham in 2017, Dave has worked on developing requirements for the safe introduction of assisted and automated vehicles, while exploring the potential insurance impacts of new technology.
Presentation: Evaluating assisted driving technologies
Rating AD technology
Moving from assisted driving to automated driving
A drivers attention will start dropping off as you build in more and more support
Need to get to Level 4 where the car can do more
Thatcham testing vehicles – combination of desk based, public road and test track
Testing affordable cars up to luxury cars
Three level assessment approach:
Under support
Balanced support
Over support
Cars are not capable of managing all the situations encountered on the road
Question about legislation
Legislation always lags technology – but it is on its way
13.30 – Dr Suzy Charman, Executive Director, Road Safety Foundation
Suzy became research director of the Road Safety Foundation in 2017. She is responsible for overseeing the technical quality and delivery of the Foundation’s research portfolio.
DELIVERED BY JEREMY PHILLIPS, ROAD SAFETY GB’S DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH
Presentation: Four ‘Es’ – Road Safety Engineering
International context – road safety performance indicators
You cannot manage what you do not measure (need national targets)
- Highways England (target) commitment for 90% travel on 3 star or above roads by 2020
- PACTS SPI report
- MRN and strategically important/higher volume local authority roads
DfT’s Safer Roads Fund
- £100m committed to treat England’s 50 highest risk local A road sections – 700km
- Roads selected on the basis of Risk Mapping
- A non competitive fund (big thanks to DfT for this)
- Submissions in April and September 2017
- Ministerial Statement announcement in June 2018
Safer Roads Fund treatments
- 10 miles of new or improved footpaths
- 20 miles of new or improved cycle facilities
- 70 miles of improved road surfaces
- 90 miles of improved visibility and signage
- 90 miles of cleared of protected roadsides
- 150 miles of improved speed limits, enforcement and traffic calming
- 225 improved junctions
- 290 miles of improved roadside shoulders
- 300 improved bends
A compelling business case
- Capital investment of nearly £100m to be spent between now and March 2021
- Around 1,450 lives and serious injuries expected to be saved in next 20 years
- £550m value of prevention of injuries (20 years)
- £125m – economic cost (20 years) – including maintenance and operation
- 4.4 – portfolio benefit cost rating
Independent evaluation
- Safer Roads Fund generally well received
- Road safety engineering support
- Proactive iRAP approach embraced by most
13.15 – Dawn Lauder, Head of Marketing & Communications, DfT
Dawn Lauder leads the marketing team at the Department for Transport, responsible for the THINK! road safety campaign. This is her second stint in the team, having started her Government communications career at DFT in 2002.
Presentation: A new approach for THINK!
Focusing on young males 17-24yrs
Peer-led research – getting into how they think and act with their friends
Messages to thrill seekers go in one ear and out of the other
Toxic attitude norms – herd mentality, views of what driving means
New creative strategy
Mates matter
Good mates have your back and set the codes
Get mates to set new ‘man’ standards (new drivers, country roads, speeding, mobile)
Get mates to have each others backs (drink drive etc)
Need to be seen and heard in their space (snapchat, ladbible etc)
Give young men the advice and tools to make changes themselves
Drink drive – they don’t step in to positively intervene
New campaigns for next year
Tackling new drivers
Learn the ways of the road
Make them more aware of their vulnerability (instagram, spotify ads through ‘ the roads whisperer giving tips etc)
Drink driving
Mates don’t let mates drink drive
Party car
Let a mate concentrate
The THINK! branding is in need to a refresh (without losing its credibility etc)
12.50 – David Davies, Executive Director, PACTS
David Davies has a background in sustainable transport, road safety, public sector scrutiny, planning and research. He has worked in local government and transport consultancies, including five years at the Transport Research Lab.
Presentation: Road safety in 2018
The last 7 years have been disappointing in terms of reducing road deaths – so what is going wrong?
If this was the NHS there would be a huge enquiry – we need to raise the standards and bar
Lows
Gov’t has not adopted road safety targets
A target is an indication of intent / commitment – PACTS will continue to campaign for this.
Highs
Three debates in parliament recently about road safety
I think there is still a strong appetite for this being an important issue
Active travel enquiry to run soon
There are number of reasons to be positive
Our job is to channel enthusiasm into what works
The road safety brief is now held by a minister of state, backed by an enthusiastic group of officials in the DfT
There is also a much better focus on collision investigation
DfT has appointed a specialist to look across the department
CWIS review – government response published last week – disappointing around the topic of speed
20mph review – PACTS has called for a serious look at how we deliver lower speeds
HSE – not engaging with work related road safety – but pleased to see this is beginning to change. Their focus is what matters and what works
Local authorities – it’s tough but there are great ideas coming out
European parliament – discussing new vehicle safety standards
Looking ahead
Tremendous technologies coming on stream
New data sources from telematics
A lot to be gained from embracing new technology
Challenges to us are to put road safety into the bigger picture (sustainability, public health, active travel etc
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