Safe Speed Forums

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 942079.ece

Road to danger

Britain can no longer proudly boast of having the safest roads in Europe, despite being the continent’s safety camera capital.

The number of cameras has almost trebled over the past six years from 1,935 to 5,562. But, according to the European Transport Safety Council, we now have 54 road deaths for every 1m of our population. That means our roads are now more dangerous than those of Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Malta.

It’s true that the era of the speed camera saw road deaths fall by 7% between 2001 and 2005, but over the same time there was a 35% drop in France while the figures for Sweden and Holland fell by a quarter.

Drink-driving is blamed for the UK’s recent poor figures. “Numbers of drink-driving deaths in Great Britain have remained high over the last decade,” says the council’s report. “They have actually risen in relation to other deaths, so this has slowed down the overall reduction in road deaths.”

***

Drink drive is nowhere near sufficient to explain our poor performance.

And the increase in drink drive is, itself, a policy failure.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Safe Speed issued the following PR at 09:34 this morning:

PR505: Awful drink drive figures are NO EXCUSE

news: for immediate release

The Times today [1] suggests that our poor road safety performance is due to
Drink Driving. Safe Speed assumes that this is coming from Department for
Transport attempting to blame Police and public for the catastrophic failure of
their policies.

But it's not true and it won't wash. The recent 'PIN Report' [2] from the
European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) gives average annual road death
changes over a decade EXCLUDING drink drive causes [3].

Average annual road deaths changes from 1996-8 baseline to 2005 EXCLUDING DRINK
DRIVE

Sweden -10.3%
France -5.9%
Estonia -5.7%
Denmark -5.3%
Switzerland -4.9%
Slovenia -4.7%
Germany -4.5%
Netherlands -4.4%
Spain -3.8%
Austria -3.5%
Latvia -3.2%
Greece -3.1%
Belgium -2.5%
Poland -2.4%
Slovakia -1.9%
Finland -1.7%
Great Britain -1.6%
Hungary -1.2%
Czech Republic -1.0%
Lithuania 1.7%

Britain is 17th out of 20 countries with figures available.

Paul Smith, founder of SafeSpeed.org.uk, said: "Our drink drive figures are
awful - and failure to deal with them is a failure of policy in itself - but
blaming our poor road safety results on drink isn't even honest, let alone an
excuse for policy makers."

"It is vital that Department for Transport comes clean and admits that their
road safety policies have failed - our safety depends on it. We need new
policies that actually save British lives."

"It's time for a road safety clean sweep. We must scrap speed cameras and start
concentrating on the quality of road user behaviour. The watchwords are skills,
attitudes and responsibility."

"I'm looking forward to highlighting these issues - and others - in Scrap Speed
Cameras Week which starts on 24th June [4]"

<ends>

Notes for editors
=================

[1] The Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 942079.ece

[2] European Transport Safety Council first PIN report:
http://www.etsc.be/documents/PIN_Report.pdf

[3] Table 7 Average yearly changes in deaths from crashes related to drink
driving and in other road crashes between 1996-1998 (baseline) and 2005

[4] Scrap Speed Cameras Week:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/sscw.html

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety