Image: Somerset Road Safety via Twitter
Somerset’s road safety team has launched a consultation on a new strategy which sets out to eliminate death and injury from the county’s roads.
The consultation has been launched on the back of figures showing that 22 people were killed in 20 fatal collisions in Somerset during 2017 – the lowest number of fatal collisions on record and three fewer than in 2016.
Somerset County Council is seeking views on a new draft road safety strategy called ‘Safe Roads in Somerset’. The strategy outlines plans to use a ‘Safe Systems’ approach to deliver the council’s ambitious vision that no road user should be killed or seriously injured on the county’s roads.
Safe System is based on the idea that there is a shared responsibility for preventing injury, between road users, enforcers and those who design, build and manage roads or vehicles.
Cllr John Woodman, Somerset County Council’s cabinet member with responsibility for road safety, said: “Whilst it is pleasing to see the number of people killed on Somerset roads decreasing, even one death is one too many.
“This is why we are consulting on our new road safety strategy. We want to take positive action and continue to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on Somerset roads.
“Every road user can play a part in improving road safety and we look forward to receiving feedback on our plans.”
The full draft strategy – which explains the Safe System approach in more detail – and a consultation summary document are both available on Somerset County Council’s consultation website.
The consultation closes on 8 March 2018.
Charles…. Authorities don’t particularly go for duplicity even though the end results would or could prove to be the same, which invariably they are. They would rather be seen as being individualistic and will work independently of each other and will not be seen to work in unison unless mutually agreed on the same intervention. Similar is ok though, whatever its name or end results may be.
bob craven
--1
Can anyone explain the difference please – between ‘Safe Systems’, as apparently favoured by Somerset and ‘Vision Zero’ that Wales went to learn about in Sweden a few days ago?
Charles, England
+3
Their ‘consultation’ questionnaire is not exactly in-depth and the questions seem to be phrased so that ‘yes’ is the only rather obvious answer which a reasonable person would give anyway, leading to apparent public support of the strategy. Nothing wrong with that perhaps but then, why bother asking? A PR exercise perhaps? If there were some innovative, potentially controversial ideas in there, a consultation would no doubt be useful.
Hugh Jones
+5