Will Spending Cuts Affect Our Road Safety?

By Author: Adam Lee
Total Articles: 4717
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Fears are growing that the new government's efficiency drive will compromise the safety of Britain's many road-users

It has been widely acknowledged that government strategies and investment in education campaigns have greatly increased road safety over the past two decades.

In the early 1980s celebrities and characters such as footballer Kevin Keegan, Green Cross code man Dave Prowse and children's favourite Tufty the Squirrel all starred in government-funded road safety television adverts.

Despite this, the death toll on British roads remained at over 5,000 per year. According to a recent article in The Guardian, this consistently high rate seemed unlikely to change since government adverts continued to suggest that road safety was the responsibility of pedestrians rather than drivers.

The Conservative government managed to reduce the road fatality rate by firstly creating a target of reducing road fatalities by a third within three years. Secondly, they introduced a strategy which achieved this goal.

It seemed to work - the death toll fell from 5,125 in ...
... 1987 to 3,409 by 1990. New Labour succeeded the Conservatives in 1997 but a target-driven road safety policy remained, and the death toll fell to an all-time low of 2,222 in 2008.

A happy knock-on effect of the reduction in the fatality rate has been a dramatic decline in the number of road injuries (for every road fatality there is an average of "eight to ten people seriously injured).

But the trend of increasing safety of Britain's roads could soon come to a halt now that the new Lib-Con government has vowed to impose savage spending cuts on ministerial departments in order to get Britain's economy back on track.

Spending on road safety is clearly not exempt from this cost-cutting drive. Duncan Vernon, road safety manager for the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) notes that reductions in road safety budgets are already being imposed on local authorities with "further cuts expected next year".
Mr Vernon said: "Difficult decisions about which important road safety activities to reduce are being faced across the country.
"The next ten-year road safety strategy, which we hope will be unveiled by the government later this year, will have to be delivered in a very different economic climate with much reduced public spending. The phrase "more for less" will echo through many spheres of public sector activity."
A £38 million road safety initiative earmarked for schemes at accident 'black spots' has already been axed while funding for speed cameras seems under threat in many areas.
RoSPA points out that 84 per cent of fixed penalty notices for speeding are issued by speed cameras - a big factor in the battle against motorists driving at life-endangering speeds.
The organisation believes that speed cameras save about 100 lives per year on British roads, explaining its fierce opposition to switching them off.
Concern that spending cuts will compromise road safety could well be shared by vulnerable road users such as motorcyclists. It is a chilling fact that only one in a 100 road users is a motorcyclist and yet one in five road deaths and serious injuries involve a motorcyclist.
Claims Direct's solicitors, with their vast experience of motorcycle injury claims, are well aware of the dangers of Britain's roads and can provide vital support for people who have suffered an injury through no fault of their own.
While the government might have to take shortcuts regarding road safety, Claims Direct will take no shortcuts when it comes to bike injury compensation.
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Claims Direct are a No Win No Fee Solicitors.
We specialise in personal injury claims involving road accidents, as well as motorcycle injury claims