Road Casualty Increases in 2011: Is the Government to Blame?

In light of the recent Transport Select Committee report, it appears people have been pointing the finger at the government, and in particular the budget cuts, as a major factor in the rise in road casualties seen in 2011. In short, I don't think the coalition government can take any blame or credit for any changes in road casualties...at least not yet anyway! This is why:

Road casualties since 2007

I've not been in the field of road safety a particularly long time, about four and a half years in fact, but when I first started going into schools to talk to pupils about road safety, the number of people killed each year on the road was around 3,000 (2,946 in 2007 to be exact!). I remember this because one of our slides compared the number of people who died in road accidents in 2007 to the number who lost their lives in the Twin Towers following the tragic events of 9/11.

In the four and a half years since, we have seen that figure fall by over 1,000, even taking into account the slight rise from 1,850 in 2010 to 1,901 in 2011. That is an incredible achievement, and something anyone involved in road safety should be proud of, but it still means nearly 2000 people are losing their lives on the UK's roads every year, not to mention the 20,000+ other people who suffer serious injuries. But is this the full picture?

Should we just look at deaths on the road?

I mentioned seriously injured casualties in the previous paragraph because the answer is: no, we shouldn't! The difference between life and death in a road accident can come down to fractions of seconds or millimetres. In terms of casualty reduction, we want to see a fall in the number of all serious road accidents, and the less serious ones too! Considering the road death figures quoted above, we see a 35% reduction between 2007 and 2011. Including serious injuries in the figures we see a much shallower reduction of 19% between 2007 and 2011. However, I must point out that the classification of a serious injury is very broad, ranging from death more than 30 days after the accident to a minor fracture requiring hospital treatment, but that's a topic for another discussion.

It is also important to state that the figures for 2011 could also prove to be an anomaly, and the downward trend could resume in 2012 and 2013 - only time will tell.

What factors can influence a reduction/increase in road casualties?

There are a multitude of factors that can influence the number of road casualties, these include improvements in vehicle technology, the weather, the price of fuel, the economy, levels of police enforcement, changes in legislation, information and marketing campaigns, training and education interventions...the list goes on. My point is, it is almost impossible to pinpoint one specific factor on a national scale to explain why casualties have decreased significantly since 2003, but increased slightly in 2011. It is in this respect that I don't think we can pin the blame on the government, however what the Transport Select Committee have correctly highlighted is that the government may have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to road safety policy and the rise in 2011 could be the start of a worrying new trend that the government could influence through their policy decisions.

Up until 2010 the government had set targets for casualty reduction at a national level. In the new Strategic Framework for Road Safety, belatedly introduced in May 2011, national targets were removed, with emphasis placed on targets and priorities being set at a local level. This has come at the same time as local councils have had to make unprecedented budget cuts in line with reduced funding from central government. A recent report by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has highlighted that cuts to road safety budgets have been considerably higher than those to other council services.

I agree that there is likely to be a long term negative effect from this disinvestment in road safety and also agree with calls from the Transport Select Committee and road safety stakeholders nationally for the government to reinstate national targets for road safety and to give much stronger leadership on this matter.

While I stated at the beginning of this post that blame shouldn't be placed on the government for the rise in casualties in 2011, if they continue to take their current course of action (or inaction) ministers need to be prepared to shoulder at least some of the responsibility for their disinvestment. Therefore I would urge them to take heed of the recommendations of the Transport Select Committee, and other road safety stakeholders, and use the review of the strategy this September as an opportunity to take back the reins and show they are serious about road safety.