Road Safety Support (RSS) has been working as a central hub for police forces and road safety partnerships for more than 14 years, specialising in enforcement technology and road safety strategy. Indeed, RSS has been working with many police forces and road safety partnerships since the end of the DfT hypothecation programme.

As partnerships and police forces adapted to recent challenges, particularly in relation to resource and funding allocation, the support provided by the RSS experts enabled the sharing of global good practice and co-ordination from a national perspective.

Strategies formulated at the start of the national camera programme, that were extremely successful at the outset, needed to be adapted. The UK had seen great gains in KSI’s at collision cluster sites, but the KSI figures started to stagnate. A new approach was required that fitted with, and supported, one of the pillars of the safe system – robust speed management.

In this presentation, Emma Kelly, RSS Development, PR & Advocacy Manager will give a short reprise of the wide area enforcement strategy that is being used by a number of police forces and road safety partnerships to reduce death and serious injury on the roads.

Steve Callaghan, RSS Technical Manager and Head of the ISO 17025 accredited Calibration Laboratory, will then discuss enabling wide area enforcement through technology. This will include how enforcement technology can support road safety partnership and roads policing objectives through effective speed management. He will talk about the emergence of dash cameras - how footage can be forensically analysed, and why it is worth taking the time to do this. Steve will demonstrate how even if we cannot see a speedometer, it is still possible to work out the speed of a moving vehicle. This allows police forces to prosecute those who flout the law, sending a clear deterrence message. During the session Steve will also talk about why having calibrated speedometers in police vehicles is important.

Emma Kelly, Development, PR & Advocacy Manager, Road Safety Support

Emma works as an independent specialist for Road Safety Support, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to saving lives and delivering justice to those who flout the road traffic laws. Her role as the development, PR and advocacy manager involves working with police forces, road safety partnerships and stakeholders in both the UK and internationally to develop robust road safety strategies. In addition, she advises on marketing and communications strategies.

Emma has spoken at conferences and presented at a number of workshops on speed management, focusing specifically on the importance of a strong enforcement strategy and the critical function of ASE in reducing road death and injury. In September 2019, she co-authored a paper on enforcement entitled, ‘Raising the Game’, which launched the RSS enforcement model to enhance the deterrence effect of enforcement. She was invited to speak at a side event titled ‘Excessive Speeding & Distracted Driving: Global Best Practices in Enforcement’ in Stockholm around the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, in February 2020.

Emma represents RSS on a number of working groups and expert panels, including autonomous vehicles, and has been invited to judge entries for road safety awards, including the First Car Young Driver Awards.

She has a Degree in History and Psychology as well as a Master’s Degree in Business and Administration. Emma was a Trustee for Relate (Cheshire and Merseyside) from 2011 to 2015. She also supports a domestic violence social enterprise.

Steve Callaghan, Technical Support Manager & Head of Calibration, Road Safety Support

Steve Callaghan is an engineer whose first disciplines are telecommunications and electronics. His first job in the industry was with GEC-Marconi, commencing in 1975.

On leaving Marconi, Steve served with the Royal Navy for 16 years where most of his time was in the submarine service specializing in tactical and strategic weapons systems. After a successful spell as a senior engineering artificer, Steve was promoted to engineering officer in 1990.

After retiring from the Royal Navy, Steve directed a telecommunications training company, assisting its growth from four to 50 technical presenters as well as writing and presenting technical training courses.

After a brief spell back at Marconi as a designer of optical network transmission systems, Steve took an appointment at Cumbria Police where he managed the Cumbria Safety Camera Partnership for five years. Steve introduced a Random Roadwatch enforcement scheme in Cumbria during 2006, which assisted in the county achieving the Government’s 2010 casualty reduction targets for the area at the end of 2007.

Steve joined RSS at the end of 2007 as technical support manager, where he designs and conducts the Type Approval Performance Testing for speed and red light enforcement systems. As well as that, Steve has gained post-graduate qualifications as a forensic engineer and puts these qualifications to practical use in the examination of evidence from Type Approved equipment and in the examination of vehicle motion in video recordings. Steve leads the ISO17025 accredited calibration laboratory at RSS that provides calibration and integrity testing of road traffic enforcement equipment in the Home Office Type Approval process.