In the same week that a national survey highlighted the value parents attach to the work of road safety officers, mayors from boroughs across London gathered to hear broadcaster Nick Ross warn about the consequences of cuts to the Capital’s road safety service.
Speaking at the LSRC’s annual conference at City Hall – directly to those who hold the purse strings – Nick Ross, LRSC president, expressed his fear that deaths will increase.
Mr Ross urged London to continue to invest in road safety and take on a new ambitious challenge – to reduce road deaths in London to 100 by 2020. (In 2011 there were 159 deaths).
Nick Ross said: “Success in reducing casualties in the last 30 years shows they are not really accidents, for if that were so we should be fatalistic. They are consequences, both of private behaviour and of public policy, and that means that we can manage the death rate.”
Mark Bunting, LRSC press officer, added: “With road safety officer posts currently being deleted across London, councils need urgently to heed the call of parents and the media to re-prioritise for road safety.”
For more information contact Mark Bunting on 020 3045 5875.
I don’t just ‘dislike’ the comment by IF I find it ‘distasteful!’…up and down the county the downward trend in KSI reduction is slowing or has stopped and in some areas the trend is now going back up! (West Midlands to name just one!) Any Government that presides over an increase in road deaths should (in my view) be held accountable in the courts!
If deaths on trains or planes increased then there would rightly be public outcry and the Government of the day would act – how would they act?…well now let’s see….maybe they would find the money to make sure that those responsible for managing safety for all transport modes had the funds they needed to do the job properly – that is what Governments do!
Absolutely those who are then required to ‘spend’ this money have to spend it wisely, making sure they focus their efforts in a targeted and measureable way so that public money is spent effectively and efficiently – that dreadful ‘value for money’ thing…although some of us find it equally distasteful to put a value on a life!
The ‘evidence’ is there for us all to see (or it is if you want to see it!) Give the right level of funding to road safety practitioners and KSI’s will be reduced…..Nick Ross is so right to put road safety back onto the political agenda – after all…we are all in this together!
Susan, Northamptonshire
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Nick Ross spoke of his late father, a TB doctor, who said that if doctors said TB was cured then the medical profession would “forget about it” or move on. He then reminded the room that TB now exists in the UK again.
He used the analogy, to remind the politicians at LRSC, a unique road safety group which has member presence, that they must not be complacent because injury figures are coming down and investment in staff skills, knowledge and ability is still required. His message was about funding and the need to maintain funding in a time when we see whole road safety departments just disappearing. He warned them about not investing in road safety and what that would ultimately cost.
Peter Wilson Westminster
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Yet again, the same old problem – the assumption of a causal link between the work of road safety officers, policies and funding when all too often there is little or no evidence of any such links.
I am not of course saying that all road safety effort is a waste of time and money, though (in the same sense as an large scale advertiser famously said “I know that 50% of my advertising budget is wasted – but which 50%?) some certainly is, just as some cause more problems than they solve. What I am saying is that everyone involved should be a more cautious about linking what is done, by whom and with what funding, with what happens to road casualty numbers. These numbers are of course heavily affected by so many factors which are in no one’s direct control, including the state of the economy (which affects not only the volume of traffic but also and arguably more significantly, whether drivers are gung-ho in a boom or cautious and slow in a depression) and of course the extremes of weather we have seen in recent years.
Idris Francis Petersfield
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