The IAM is using the party conference in Brighton as an opportunity to call on the Labour Party to back the reintroduction of targets for reducing injuries and deaths on the road.
The IAM says that a survey of local councillors that it conducted earlier this year showed that Labour councillors were the most committed to road safety. 74% of those polled said it was a priority for them, while 78% disagreed with the removal of road safety targets.
Internationally, road safety targets are seen as best practice and are used by most developed and developing countries. The IAM says that a target-led approach to road safety would allow the highest risk groups, such as cyclists, motorcyclists and drivers on rural roads, to be the focus of “well-coordinated enforcement, engineering and educational campaigns”.
Simon Best, IAM chief executive, said: “Road safety targets work very effectively. In the past they joined up organisations.
“Local councils, the police, the NHS and safety camera partnerships used common targets to bring their policies together. And where there was a target, they always wanted to exceed it.”
Contact the IAM press office on 020 8996 9777 for more information.
A brief response to Eric then I will bow out of this thread.
The reason we don’t spend time and money on “general” publicity is because specific, targeted messages and interventions are more effective. E.g. Motorcyclists see much of our work here in North Yorkshire that the general population do not need or want to read. Mrs Miggins in Amplethorpe does not need to know how to position to approach a bend on a motorbike. But we do sometimes advertise in her local paper asking her and her neighbours to look out for bikers and cyclists when they make a turn or overtake.
And so on.
It’s market segmentation, in the marketing jargon; to provide the right information to the right people at the right time, not to scattergun to everyone else as well in the hope that some of your target audience will also pick it up.
Honor Byford, Vice Chair Road Safety GB
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Eric – you say in your post below:
“I often find “road safety” on council websites equates to pages about what speed cameras are “intended to do” (and, incidentally, little about how well they are doing across the county).”
I’m sorry, but in my view that is simply not correct.
Here is the road saftey section on the North Yorkshire CC website (Honor’s authority):
http://www.northyorks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3238
Including the homepage, there are nines pages of road safety information – only one of which relates to ‘speed’. This is not untypical of the information you will find on the majority of local authority road safety websites.
You are very focused on ‘speed management’ but I would like you to accept/understand that the work carried out by road safety officers covers a much wider remit.
Nick Rawlings, editor, Road Safety News
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Honor
I never doubted that RSOs are doing good work in specific areas but you say “most of the education, training, publicity and other casualty reduction and prevention work is unseen by the general population”.
That was my point – why are proper road safety messages (as opposed to the simplistic, misleading and self-promoting “slow down, speed kills” type messages) not reaching the general population?
I often find “road safety” on council websites equates to pages about what speed cameras are “intended to do” (and, incidentally, little about how well they are doing across the county).
This is what leads to the view of Dave Finney and me that road safety messaging and educational publicity could be more visible and more effective.
Eric Bridgstock, Independent Road Safety Research, St Albans
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The publicity campaigns undertaken through Casualty Reduction Partnerships are not the whole story. Far from it; most of the education, training, publicity and other casualty reduction and prevention work is unseen by the general population. It takes place in:
• Schools, colleges, workplaces, village halls, town centres, public events.
• Planning (designing out potential hazards).
• Engineering, to improve infrastructure.
• Training for Fire Service and Police Officers to increase their knowledge which they can then disseminate to wider communities to help address local problems.
• Training and information for driving instructors to inform their work and how they teach the drivers of tomorrow.
• Information posted or e-mailed out to people of all ages every day.
• Thousands of people visiting the many road safety related websites every day.
It would be wrong to use the few publicity campaigns and local media articles that you happen to see as representative of the whole of road safety education and casualty prevention activity and to pass judgement on that basis.
Honor Byford, Vice Chair, Road Safety GB
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As Rod says, focussuing on the stats which represent the more serious consequences of road accidents shouldn’t make us lose sight of the overall picture. If you spend an hour or so observing behaviour on a road where there is potential conflict between road users of all types, you will see horrendous behaviour, plenty of near-misses.. but very likely, no actual collisions – because of the randomness and scarcity of them. That doesn’t mean there never will be one, or that everything must therefore be hunky-dory – the problem of reckless and carelss actions by some road-users will probably never go away and gauging ‘success’ in road safety terms by the more measurable serious consequences of road accidents will not necessarily give the whole picture.
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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Honor
I’m afraid that much of the public awareness, advertising and “messaging” comes across as promoting the self-serving “casualty reduction partnerships”, especially when the results are less than healthy.
This view is underlined by a quick look at the Minutes of Partnership meetings, which spend more time reviewing public perceptions of the partnership, and public opinion about how they are performing, than they do about actual road safety performance across the county. Bring back real, honest, road safety advertising.
Eric Bridgstock, Independent Road Safety Research, St Albans
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There you go again, Dave!
Local authorities and central government are agreed that the casualty reduction targets that were set by government between 2000-2010 and measured against the same 1994-1998 average baseline were met. This is by using the same data sources and data sets from start to finish and therefore comparing like with like. That evidence is sound and robust.
The setting of targets with supporting funding focussed significant effort from the various agencies onto the same issues at the same time. This enabled a level of coordinated work between engineering, education and publicity and enforcement operations that had not been seen before. It also raised the public profile and awareness of road safety issues, information and messages to an unprecedented extent. Millions of people saw road safety advertising on their televisons, for example. In most local areas this coordinated work continues, albeit at a reduced level, and provides much better value for taxpayers’ money (and please remember we are all taxpayers too) so there is an on-going legacy benefit. No-one is saying that the reductions were achieved purely as a result of this work but we do judge that the many interventions and this way of working in coordination have contributed to the achievement of the reductions.
Honor Byford, North Yorkshire
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I think that we should all recognise that KSIs are a tiny proportion of total road casualties. Out of an estimated 710,000 road casualties in 2012 there were less than 25,000 KSIs. That’s 3.5%.
But it’s the 710,000 which effect most our perception of danger because we are all far more likely to experience them. Just like in the lottery it’s the million pound jackpot that attracts people, but the reasonably frequent £10 prize that keeps people addicted.
Whilst we all fear death and serious injury on the roads it’s the far more frequent non-serious casualty that reminds us of the danger and deters us from feeling comfortable about walking and cycling on our streets.
Rod King, 20’s Plenty for Us
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Actually Honor, I think you’ve reversed the reversed responsibility response! Your link states: “When anyone makes a claim that a certain entity or relationship exists, they have the responsibility of supplying supporting evidence. Without such evidence, the claim is worthless”.
Therefore, if the authorities state that targets were met and suggest this was because of their interventions, then they must present “sufficient real-world evidence”. KSI had reduced by just over 40% in the previous period therefore setting a target of 40% KSI reduction by 2010 was simply an extrapolation of what occurred previously. The dramatic decline in fatality reductions in the mid 1990s was reported by ABD, PACTS, SSI, Autocar and “others”. All I did was investigate their findings:
http://speedcamerareport.co.uk/05_gb_road_safety.htm
The setting of targets often produces unexpected and undesirable side-effects but, if road safety targets must be set, they should at least be measured independently. I would suggest using hospital stats.
Dave Finney, Slough
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It is irrational and against all logic to state that the targets would have been met even if the authorities “did nothing”. This is the classic reversed responsibility response tactic that is intended to confuse and bemuse whilst avoiding providing the evidence to support the assertion.
Every action has an effect, whether it is the intended effect or something else, actions cannot have no effect and even doing nothing has an effect. The act of observation itself has an effect.
Therefore, Dave’s assertion cannot be correct. Nor can he prove that it is.
See this link for more details about reversed responsibility:
http://scienceornot.net/2012/12/04/the-reversed-responsibility-response-switching-the-burden-of-proof/
Honor Byford, North Yorkshire
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Simple to understand targets (e.g. fatals or KSI) are a good idea and help secure funding for action.
Dave- not sure why you are questioning accuracy of fatal injuries, plus authorities certainly did not “do nothing”.
pete, liverpool
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Previous road safety targets can hardly be considered a success. The first target was to reduce all casualties by one third by 2000 but there was almost no change (under 1%).
The second was a set of targets, the main being a 40% reduction in KSI by 2010. The figures were on target in stats19, but not by any other datasets eg fatalities, hospitals, fire and rescue, insurance etc. In fact, something had gone seriously wrong with road safety ever since the mid 1990s but, when the recession hit in 2007, the trends changed sharply and the target was, due to the recession, met.
But even then, the 40% KSI reduction target was simply an extrapolation of the previous trend therefore the target would be met if the authorities did nothing and trend simply continued as before.
What makes the IAM think setting more targets would achieve anything?
Dave Finney, Slough
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