Royal patron for new UK-based road safety charity

12.00 | 6 May 2016 | | 14 comments

Prince Michael of Kent has been unveiled as patron of a new road safety charity working to establish a world free from road fatalities.

The Towards Zero Foundation (TZF) has been set up as a platform for co-operation between organisations committed to the application of the Safe System approach to road safety management, which is based on the principle that life and health should not be compromised by the need to travel.

The UK registered charity will also push all United Nations (UN) member states to adopt effective strategies for road safety, and apply an adequate framework of policies and laws to support the achievement of ambitious casualty reduction targets.

It will support the aims of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 and UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development; which has set the ambitious goal of reducing road fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by 2020.

Prince Michael has become synonymous with road safety since 1987 when he established the Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards. He has also served as patron of the Commission for Global Road Safety, and is a strong supporter of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety.

Prince Michael said: “I am very pleased to have been invited to serve as patron of the Towards Zero Foundation. I have long been a supporter of the vision zero or safe systems approach to road safety, pioneered by the Swedish government, and now taken up as a guiding public policy by transport legislators across the world.

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    Hi Elaine,

    In answer to your question about the recording (or not) of fatalities that are confirmed to have been medical episodes or suicides, I can only speak for our recording process in the North East (Northumbria, Durham and Cleveland police forces), however I suspect that this will be similar around the country.

    Once a fatality has been confirmed to have been either due to a medical episode (e.g. heart attack before the collision occurred), or a suicide then it is retrospectively removed from the Stats 19 database held by both the police force and local authority. However, if this information is related to a previous reporting year (which it often is due to the c.18 month timescale for a coroner’s inquest) these data are not removed from the historic national stats 19 database that is published by the DfT, so this does result in local fatality numbers being ever so slightly different than what are reported nationally. Of course, if there was someone else injured in the collision then they will still be listed as a casualty.

    I hope this is helpful.


    Peter Slater, North East Regional Road Safety Resource
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    Dear Ms Byford,

    Thank you for your response and the links you provided. Unfortunately they did not really supply the information I needed, or rather they only partially provided details. But I do appreciate your efforts. As I previously mentioned, I am not disputing the objectives, simply suggesting that we do not know enough to be able to consider such a target.

    Elaine Hardy PhD
    http://www.righttoride.org.uk


    Elaine, France
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    The full details about how Stats 20 forms are completed,what data is recorded and how, are publicly available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/230596/stats20-2011.pdf

    More specific enquiries can be directed to the DfT data team at: stats19@dft.gsi.gov.uk


    Honor Byford, Chair, Road Safety GB
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    As ever, it’s the balance between mobility for the masses – whether for recreation or business – and what level of collisions and casualties we (society) tolerate as a price for this ability to move around at speed. I think there’s a limit, without resorting to very draconian measures, to what the authorities can do to keep on reducing the likelihood of collisions – let alone vision zero – so it has to be down to individual road users and their self-discipline, abilty and desire for self-preservation and setting their own ‘vision zero’ for each journey. It’s not impossible – there are many motorists who already do this.


    Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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    “Collisions that are found to have either a medical cause (e.g. a driver having a heart attack and then crashing) or suicide as the cause are removed from the collision and casualty data before it is finalised and published.”

    Are you certain?

    As an example, if the driver of a vehicle has a stroke or a heart attack and causes the death of another road user, then the collision would be recorded I would assume i.e. not necessarily the death of the driver who may have had a stroke or heart attack, but the victom. Perhaps I should have been more specific… although that seems to be a reasonable assumption.

    In the case of suicide, that would (in many cases) require a coroner’s inquest. So the question in this particular case would be – when are the data recorded? An inquest can take up to and beyond a year.

    My point is that it is not that simple. Would it be possible to have a response from someone who collates the data? – e.g. a statisticians?

    My understanding of Vision Zero as intended by the Swedish at least – was exactly that – zero collisions. At least this was proposed by Klaus Tingvall. I am not disputing the objectives, simply suggesting that we do not know enough to be able to consider such a target. As in any road traffic collision, there are far too many variables.


    Elaine, France
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    Collisions that are found to have either a medical cause (e.g. a driver having a heart attack and then crashing) or suicide as the cause are removed from the collision and casualty data before it is finalised and published.

    The principle of Vision Zero is not that we will prevent all crashes and casualties in the near future but that we adopt a mind-set that we do not accept that collisions and casualties are inevitable. This means that we approach collisions and road safety from the standpoint of inquiry and challenge and that there is always something that can be learned and things that can be done to reduce road crashes and resulting casualties. It is this mind-set that is crucial and why Vision Zero or the Safe Systems Approach is how we should work to design our vehicles, our highways and our road user training and education to ultimately achieve zero casualties – however long that may take.


    Honor Byford, Chair, Road Safety GB
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    Towards Zero or Vision Zero, the same aims and objectives. Honourable of course.

    I have a question – and I can’t find the answer in any of the stats on road casualties.

    How many people die of natural causes in a collision (either single or multiple)? I calculate from my studies around 9 to 10% of deaths, but my findings may not be statistically significant.

    Second question: How many people commit suicide either while driving a vehicle or as a pedestrian? I calculate about 5% but as above that information is from my research and may not be statistically significant.

    You see where I am going with this, don’t you Nick. I seriously believe that we don’t know enough about road traffic collision investigations to be able to ever consider zero as a target.

    Answers on a postcard?


    Elaine, France
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    ‘Granting driving licenses to the elite minority…’? you may actually have something there Charles! Who would decide who qualifies though – you? me? RSGB? this forum? a committee of ‘experts’? Perhaps as part of the current driving test, the examiner should be asking searching questions of the candidate to root out the wrong ‘uns – a bit of psychological profiling!


    Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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    Hugh, you asked directly how I would “explain how some drivers are more accident-prone than others and how some drivers don’t even come close to having accidents.”

    The simple answer is that that each driver and every driver is an individual human being, and all human beings are different. In the same way that our visible attributes such as hair colour, eye colour and physique can vary, so can our invisible attributes such as those that control our mental functions. For that reason, individual ability to judge distances or speeds, anticipate potential dangers, concentrate for prolonged periods, assess risk, control our bravado, understand physics, have pride in our driving skills and so forth can also vary. Some combinations of values for these attributes may lead to “better” drivers than others.

    So unless we, as a society, choose to only grant driving licences to the elite minority who have a particular gene configuration, we need to accept that for the safety and well being of the community as a whole, we need to be cleverer in the way we design our road system – to make it better tolerate human fallibility. Our current system (with measures such as speed limits, stop signs and traffic lights) relies, for it to be fully effective, on the suspension of the laws of human nature for people whilst they are dring. Luckily, most people do have a strong self-preservation instinct and a strong dread of hurting others, so the inherent weaknesses of the current system are largely compensated for by the automatic “knee-jerk” evasive responses that will be induced if these are triggered by an appropriate “event”.

    Better to try to harness the laws of human nature though that try to defy them, methinks.


    Charles, England
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    Agreed Nick. Mine wasn’t a criticism of RSGB for running the story, only an observation about the story itself.


    Rod King, Cheshire, 20’s Plenty for Us
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    How would Charles explain how some drivers are more accident-prone than others and how some drivers don’t even come close to having accidents. Is it by some fluke that the former only ever drive on unsafe roads, whilst the latter only drive on safe roads? I hope Charles himself has enjoyed an accident-free motoring life and if so I would put that down to him being a particularly safe driver, regardless of the roads he was on at the time as with most of us hopefully.


    Hugh Jones, Cheshire,
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    Rod – the charity describes itself as ‘new’ – see:
    http://www.towardszerofoundation.org/hrh-prince-michael-of-kent-gvco-becomes-patron-of-new-international-road-safety-charity-the-towards-zero-foundation/


    Nick Rawlings, editor, Road Safety News
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    Far from being a new charity this one was first registered in August 2013 as “Make Roads Safe” and in December 2014 changed its name to “Towards Zero Foundation” under the chairmanship of Max Mosley. So whilst it may be news that it has attracted the patronage of Prince Michael of Kent this is clearly not a “new” charity.


    Rod King, Cheshire, 20’s Plenty for Us
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    Wow, a road safety paradigm which actually recognises that to be safe, road systems need to be designed to tolerate human fallibility! I look forward to hearing opinions from the regulars here, including from those who maintain that all roads are safe and it’s just the way that they are used which is dangerous.


    Charles, England
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