There are mounting cals for the government to get a grip on road safety.

They come as the Department for Transport’s Road Safety Strategic Framework was postponed in light of the July heatwave but also because of the disarray in government after PM Boris Johnson was toppled as leader of the Conservative party and forced to step down as PM.

Building better

Writing on the Road Safety GB website, Executive Director of PACTS (The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety), David G Davies has called on the government to release the new Framework.

“Many of us in the road safety sector have been looking forward to the Department for Transport’s Road Safety Strategic Framework. The 2019 Statement had run its course and the strategic vacuum was becoming increasingly evident,” writes Davies.

“A lot of work went into preparing the framework by civil servants, the road safety community and others. We were told it had ministerial and cross-departmental sign-off. The press release had been crafted, with supportive statements from selected stakeholders, and a slot had been found in that all-controlling government media grid.

But should we blame the Met Office for the non-appearance of the framework?”

Levelling down

The Framework was already overdue following the two year pandemic. Now the current heatwaves not only seem to be buckling train lines, melting roads and overheating vehicles and drivers, it seems the release is delayed yet further.  As Davies asks: “Did that really prevent the internet from circulating a few megabytes?”

It now seems the Autumn is the soonest we are likley to see the statement, in what Davies describes as “a very elastic season in government publishing terms”.

A new Prime Minister, then major cabinet reshuffles, changes of civil servants, new policy proposals, is road safety really going to be a priority? Liz or Rishi certainly haven’t been mentioning it in their various hustings, but then again they haven’t really said much at all when it comes to policies.

“This government has a track record of failing to publish important road safety documents. I tweeted in January about eight which were due, if not well overdue. Seven months later, only two have appeared.

The DfT has responded to its consultation on a Road Collision Investigation Branch. It has also issued a call for evidence on Road Traffic Law – but concerning drug driving, not drink driving as the Lord Brooke and other Peers requested,” states Davies.

He lists further failures – there is still no sign of:

  • A response to the Roads Policing Review call for evidence, issued July 2020;
  • The WSP/ Loughborough University report for DfT on road safety targets, delivered January 2021;
  • The DfT monitoring report on the e-scooter rental trials, originally due in September 2021 but now to be published “later this year”;
  • A consultation on penalties for seat belt offences – agreed in 2020 but put back to focus on amending the mobile phone law (completed March 2022);
  • Regulations to modernise vehicle safety standards. The Government has not implemented the regulations it previously endorsed and now in force in the EU. It will now “do what is in the UK’s interests”. (Apart from the uncertainty and delay, the word “safety” is conspicuously absent.)

 

Over cooked

David Davies continues his displeasure at government inaction over the years.

“The disgrace is that the delay means more death and injury on the roads. After the substantial drop in 2020 the signs are that casualties are returning to broadly pre-pandemic levels. All the talk about building back greener, safer etc seem to have faded.

“In 2011 the UK had the lowest rate of deaths of any European country, ahead of Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and all those other good performers. By 2021 the UK had slipped to fifth, with one of the lowest rates of improvement over that decade. The UK was also one of the few countries without a strategy or targets. (Scotland and other parts of the UK which do have these things will have to forgive my brevity here.)”

Following on the failures over training and testing since the lockdowns, not to mention added pressures through rail strikes, it would seem that such a vital part of modern society and, one so potentially dangerous to users, the roads, have disappeared from government maps.

You can read the full letter on the Road Safety GB website here.