Transport Crucible . com

Demand to maintain and improve safety standards are key factors for policy-makers and transport service providers. One widely believed theory is that speed is the cause of anything between a third to most of all road crash injuries or deaths. Correspondingly there are widespread calls for more measures to reduce vehicle speeds on roads – especially in residential areas of streets. There is currently a UK vogue for the spread of 20 mph zones. Enforcement of such limits can be achieved by the introduction of physical speed-reducing devices like road humps or deployment of automated enforcement cameras. But, in practice, ‘Exceeding speed limit’ was attributed to “3 per cent of cars involved in accidents” and five percent of all severities of accidents were a police officer attended – according to the latest DfT casualty report. In practice, speed is not the most common cause of traffic injuries, “Failed to look properly” is and was linked to 35% of all casualty incidents. It also transpires revealed that “Pedal cyclists, followed by LGV drivers are the most likely to be in an accident in which they failed to look properly”, (25 per cent and 23 per cent respectively), and that “Motorcycles are most likely to be in an accident with another vehicle that failed to look properly”.

So, there is also support for reducing road casualties by increasing the deployment of traffic police – who unlike cameras are able to discern careless or dangerous driving that is not related to exceeding speed limits. How to optimise the improvement of transport safety is however the subject of great debate and considerable confusion. At one extreme there are groups and individuals who believe that it is possible and desirable to eliminate the prospect or even risk of injury from transport activities completely – well at least on roads. The leaders of this school of thought are a bunch of Swedes who founded an organisation called Vision Zero. They say: “it is possible to use a public health model combining research, engineering, education, and enforcement to arrive at a zero accident rate.” And what ever you may think of this notion, including an inclination to dismiss the whole idea as barking mad you should note that the UK’s very own Department for Transport took it so seriously that it commissioned a formal exploration of it and report, see for yourselves at DfT Project: Vision Zero On the other hand there are those who have very different views about such notions as Vision Zero and indeed the optimum way to maintain and enhance safety. One place to find a discussion about this idea is on a forum section of the Safe Speed website.

Further explorations of vision zero lead to a suggestion in the Telegraph (albeit perhaps a mischievous one) that one essential step in that direction would be to; Ban Motorcycles, Safety Expert Says There are of course a myriad of organisations with views on transport safety in the midst of which is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents RoSPA, and small but often quoted outfits like BRAKE .