Road Safety Foundation UK

Many thanks to all involved in coordinating a groundbreaking manifesto calling for immediate and strategic action to address the persistent issue of road fatalities and serious injuries in the UK. With support from more than 30 leading organisations, PACTS outlines 4 strategic priorities to significantly reduce fatalities and serious injuries on UK roads. 1. Developing a National Road Safety Strategy focused on prevention, protection, and post-collision response, coupled with evidence-based targets and robust safety performance indicators. 2. Establishing a Road Safety Investigation Branch modelled on existing transportation safety branches to analyse road incidents and provide actionable insights for preventing future tragedies. 3. Introducing Graduated Driver Licensing to support young drivers by limiting high-risk driving situations, a measure proven to reduce fatalities by up to 40%. 4. Adopting Advanced Vehicle Safety Regulations - Immediate implementation of the world-leading vehicle safety standards, mandating critical technologies such as Automatic Emergency Braking and Intelligent Speed Assistance. The UK has seen a stagnation in road safety improvements since 2010, from being a global leader in road safety, it is now lagging behind other nations. Every day, five people die on UK roads, with more than 30,000 individuals killed or seriously injured annually, amounting to a staggering societal and economic cost of approximately £43.5 billion each year. Jamie Hassall: “These four simple measures will be the building blocks to enable the UK to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads. With strong leadership and a strategic approach the UK managed to half the numbers of road deaths in a decade but since 2010 the focus was lost and daily road deaths have remained at five a day. Investing in road safety is not just a moral duty but it’s good for peoples’ health and wellbeing, the environment, business, and the country.” PACTS urges the incoming government to prioritise these strategies within the first 100 days of office to ensure the UK meets international road safety targets and sets a global standard in protecting its citizens. TRL Richard Cuerden Cycling UK RAC Foundation Elizabeth Box Kumar Niketan Brake, the road safety charity Ross Moorlock Road Safety Foundation UK Dr Suzy Charman Nick Reed Towards Zero Foundation David Ward National Motorcyclists Council Road Safety GB James Gibson The Road Safety Trust Ruth Purdie OBE UKROEd Intelligent Transport Systems UK Max Sugarman Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) ADRIAN walsh RoadSafe The AA Edmund V King OBE Sustrans RoadPeace Rebecca Morris Thatcham Research MCIA UK Road Safety Analysis Ltd The Bikeability Trust Agilysis Limited Safer Essex Roads Partnership IAM RoadSmart Neil Greig Co-Pilot

Using the iRAP methodology, road safety infrastructure changes and safer speeds have prevented almost 700,000 deaths and serious injuries in 74 countries since 2016, according to a new paper with Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit published in the respected journal PLOS One. The paper ‘Statistical estimation of fatal and serious injuries saved by iRAP protocols in 74 countries’ estimates the likely impact of road improvements in 1,039 infrastructure projects where the iRAP methodology and tools have been used. Key findings of the report, with modelling year-by-year, show the application of the iRAP model will have prevented a cumulative and estimated 699,768 deaths and serious injuries between January 2016 and the end of 2024. Further, the paper projects that by 2044, the existing road treatments will prevent almost 3.2 million fatalities and serious injuries, given the average effective lifespan of 20 years. https://lnkd.in/gW8PauV8 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Rob McInerney Saul Billingsley Abdulgafoor Bachani

Of course we are speaking at Highways UK :)

Another £38million of investment through DfT’s safer roads fund announced today. That’s £85 million committed in the last year, and nearly £200 million so far. The estimated impact of SRF so far - 2,600 fatal and serious injuries prevented over the next 20 years, value of prevention of £1.2bn and a BCR of 5.3. At the Road Safety Foundation we are very proud to have been involved in the selection of these routes, the business case, provision of the tools for local authorities (iRAP and the route review tool) and the support for the road authorities putting together schemes. It has been a busy year and I’m so grateful to those that have been involved in the latest set of routes (Kate Fuller, James Bedingfeld, Brian Lawton, James Bradford, John Barrell, Suzanne Coles, Mark Burke, Sam Chapman, RACHEAL MARTHA NGANWA and of course our coding team at FPZ) Our colleagues at DfT have been incredible in making sure this investment happens! The local authorities we work with are brilliant. Just look at the positive social impact they can bring when there is funding made available to them. Amazing work. We must continue to see this type of investment on local a roads. And it goes without saying that the Major Road Network needs this kind of safety investment too. https://lnkd.in/eWYpfwA2

What a privilege to have presented the national highways industry awards for safety last night with Mike Wilson. Some exceptional projects and people getting recognition for their determination to reduce death and serious injury on our strategic road network. Obviously I had to abstain from judging the two shortlisted awards that RSF had played a role in, but was delighted to hand over an award for exceptional contribution to road user safety to Dan Trump at Jacobs and National Highways for the A21 safety package where they used the iRAP data and tools to develop a transformative road safety scheme. Also delighted to see Arup recognised for their A417 missing link project in another category where they used iRAP to model this new piece of infrastructure using Star Rating for Designs.

Free Webinar 26th February 2024 14.00 – 15.30 Join us at a free webinar to hear about how free telematics speed data has been provided in the West Midlands for use in enforcement, road safety engineering and research. The webinar will include speakers from the Police and Local Authorities who will describe how the data has been used to deploy resources efficiently and assess requests from local communities. Please register here: https://lnkd.in/eDukz_SP Background Telematics data describing vehicle movements can provide a rich source of information about how people are using a road network. Millions of vehicle traces accumulate across the network every day, which means we can build a picture of how vehicles are moving along the network, and importantly for road safety analysis, how vehicle speeds vary along routes and across networks. Traditionally, vehicle speed data has been captured either using a ‘speed gun’ or Automatic Traffic Counters (ATCs) at single point locations. Increasingly Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems are used on major routes. These data are coarse and sparsely available across the road network. Telematics however can provide a very rich source of data on speed since every inch of the network is covered and increases and decreases in vehicle speeds can be detected along a route which can help identify where compliance is poor and where speed management approaches need to be applied. It can also help refine models (e.g. iRAP Star Rating) since such models require speed as an input variable.    The data has been made available to road safety stakeholders in the West Midlands region and is free of charge. A ‘how to use’ document is also available to provide guidance to users on how to use the data in a variety of ways including how to inform speed limit setting and how to identify areas with the highest non-compliance. Who should attend? Local Authority officers and consultants who use speed data in their jobs including development control officers, traffic management, transport planners and road safety practitioners. Researchers may also find the data extremely useful. West Midlands Police West Midlands Combined Authority The Hub at West Midlands Fire Service West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust Laura Shoaf, CBE Matthew Shelton Adam Tranter Alex Greatholder MSci MCIHT MTPS carl beet