Road Safety Campaigners Call For Government To Do More To Reduce Road Deaths
Road safety campaigners are calling for the government to do more to reduce the number of road deaths in the UK.
With a general election on the horizon, campaigners and experts are calling on whoever wins and forms a new government to make road safety a priority.
It’s an important time for key issues to be raised as political parties consider their manifestos ahead of an election in the next 12 months and for many, road safety and road deaths should be a fixture within that.
What Needs To Happen To Reduce Road Deaths?
As we all know, improving road safety is a multi-layered issue and one where there isn’t a cure-all fix to improve things.
But as rules have tightened on distracted driving and mobile phone use in recent years, as well as plans for more automated cameras to catch offending drivers, work is already being done to improve the situation.
The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) is leading the calls for changes to be made, producing a manifesto that they say will put strategic action in place to address the road safety issue in the UK.
Of the things outlined in the document, a national road safety strategy is perhaps the key takeaway.
That would mean establishing a road safety investigation branch, introducing graduated driver licences, and adopting advanced vehicle safety regulations.
Each of these are things that have been discussed but none have made it to the stage of debates and motions being tabled, which means they’re currently a little way away from becoming reality.
With five people dying every day on UK roads and more than 30,000 either being killed or seriously injured every year, it’s clear there is an issue to address.
Road Safety – What Happens Next?
With politicians vying for votes, considerations will be made over what matters most to people.
As we all know, the smart motorway debate and the 20mph speed limit has brought the focus on road safety into view, which means there are likely to be debates over key issues.
Whoever is in government after the general election will be looking to hit the ground running and the first 100 days are usually the key period in which they aim to tick off a few of their manifesto pledges…
Making sure one of those is an improvement in road safety is the aim of campaigners now.
The Road Safety Investigation Branch (RSIB) was promised by government in 2022 but as of now, despite assurances they’re still committed to it, it has yet to officially launch.
The idea is that the RSIB won’t have any input in deciding liability in relation to individual road traffic incidents but will instead focus on factors outside of the local police’s remit.
Some of the main goals will be to gain insight into the causes and contributing factors that lead to incidents in an attempt to learn from and prevent further incidents of that nature from occurring in the future or at least reduce the likelihood that they do.
What are the main areas of concern for you around road safety? What measures would you like to see implemented? Let us know in the comments below.
