A belief among nearly two-thirds of UK motorists that driver errors are most to blame for death and serious injury in crashes lets road authorities, that need to spend more making roads between towns and cities more forgiving, off the hook, says the AA Motoring Trust.
Drivers will always make errors, but local authorities should work to make sure that these blunders do not lead to the severest consequences. In many accidents, drivers and passengers may have survived had the layout and design of roads been more able to reduce the impact of driver mistakes.
The AA Motoring Trust, as part of the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP), believes that road safety now needs a greater shift of emphasis on to better highway engineering. While most crashes stem from driver error, national safety strategies across Europe show that safer design and layout of the road itself would do most to reduce the rate of death and serious injury. This is particularly true in countries where messages about better driver behaviour and safer vehicles are generally understood and accepted.
According to EuroRAP research, 65 per cent of people in Britain believe that investing in safer driver behaviour would produce the greatest return in reduced casualties. This compares with 20 per cent who see safer road design as the way forward and 15 per cent who prefer safer cars.
In reality, scientific research shows that road engineering measures, like safety barriers and improved junctions, and speed management measures, like traffic calming and speed limits, have the potential to reduce road casualties in Sweden by 59 per cent, in Holland by 50 per cent and the UK by 44 per cent. In Britain, a further 35 per cent reduction could be achieved by safer vehicles, 16 per cent by safer driver behaviour and five per cent through other measures like child safety projects.*
Along major roads between towns and cities, for example, 80 per cent of fatal crashes result from just four types of collision: head-on, junction, running off the road, and pedestrian and cyclist incidents**. The 18,957 accidents over three years on major roads in rural areas account for a fifth of fatal and serious road casualties in the UK. In Sweden, safety barriers down the middle of notoriously bad single-lane roads have proven effective in combating head-on crashes, although controversial. Upgraded junctions, that change collisions from fully side-on to angled impacts, also reduce casualties.
"Just because drivers, who are unfamiliar with a notoriously dangerous road, mistakenly take corners too fast and crash doesnt mean they deserve to die or be severely injured - particularly if they hit, for instance, a lamppost or road sign that better design would have shielded behind a crash barrier," says Paul Watters, head of roads and transport policy for The AA Motoring Trust.
"Perpetuating the notion that drivers are their own worst enemies, and need to be controlled through strict enforcement, is often a convenient over-simplification that saves money but not lives. By all means, keep the pressure up on drivers to improve their behaviour but not to the extent of failing to invest in life-saving road design and maintenance."
NOTES TO EDITORS:
* SUNflower: A comparative study of the development of road safety in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands 2002. External site PDF: Pages 114-15.
** EuroRAP case study: Potential for risk reductions on British inter-urban major roads 2005 (PDF 837K)
