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A bolder strategy is need to address road safety according to the Transport Select Committee Report ‘Ending the Scandal of Complacency: Road Safety beyond 2010′ published today.
The report calls for, amongst other initiatives, the need for:
- Greater power to be given to local authorities to introduce 20mph limits
- Increased enforcement to tackle drink driving
- The creation of a road safety commission
The report rightly points out that road safety is a ‘major public health problem of our age’. Every 6 seconds someone is killed or seriously injured on the world’s roads and as a public health issue it is on the scale of malaria and tuberculosis. Reducing death and injury on all roads is undoubtedly of central importance.
Many of the committee recommendations are sound and timely. The Foundation has long called for greater police presence and enforcement, and the issue of unlicensed and uninsured driving needs greater attention. 20mph zones have a role to play, but more research is needed before blanket 20mph zones are widely implemented in urban areas. Policy development in this area should not speed ahead of understanding, local considerations or public acceptance. As we move towards future policy we must also not forget the importance of ‘getting the basics’ right such as enforcing mobile phone and seatbelt laws.
A billion pounds of public transport fare cuts would reduce car travel by less than half a percent, according to the Royal Automobile Club Foundation’s latest research paper, ‘Public Transport Effects on Road Traffic: Potential and Limitations’ published today* (24).
The Foundation’s paper finds that even with significant increases in investment the scope for switching from private to public transport remains limited because different types of transport serve discrete markets.
Making public transport cheaper by increasing fare subsidies could reduce car traffic – but several billions of pounds would be needed every year to have a measurable impact. The RAC Foundation has calculated that cutting fares by injecting a £1bn in subsidies to bus or rail travel would only reduce car travel (driver and passenger) by less than half a percent.
The report questions whether the public transport network could cope with a surge in growth. The railway network is already congested and existing overcrowding must be tackled before additional passengers can be encouraged to swap the road for the rails. A new High Speed Train line from London to Glasgow would reduce motorway traffic in the corridor by up to 5% – 7%; but this costly venture, would mostly replace travel by air.
Parking for travellers using commuter or long distance trains can reduce road traffic on main routes in and out of our large cities. However, lack of sufficient affordable parking, as well as crowded trains, limits its potential. Intercity park and ride almost certainly encourages the use of rail and a small reduction in long distance car travel can result.
Improved local bus services would only stop a limited number of people travelling between towns in the car. Express coaches have some potential but they require fast and reliable intercity routes to be effective.
Stephen Glaister, Director of the RAC Foundation says ‘Public transport is important but it will not solve our transport problems. Even if billions of pounds more than the UK is currently spending were available and spent wholly on public transport it would only have a marginal impact on getting people out of their cars.’
‘Motorists already pay in excess of £45 billion per year in motoring taxes. Many will say that the cost of motoring is too low and that it needs to be increased to make public transport attractive. The truth is that public transport will only ever be suitable for certain trips and certain markets, and the private car will remain the dominant form of transport. Rather than pricing people out of the market for car use, we need to develop a whole new system for paying for motoring, which supports the development of public transport, pays attention to vehicle emissions and allows people real choice when making their journeys’.
* The RAC Foundation’s paper Public Transport Effects on Road Traffic: Potential and Limitations’ was prepared for the RAC Foundation by David Bayliss OBE. The paper is available on the Foundation’s website to download.
This week, Transport Minister Paul Clark announced both a crackdown on misuse of Blue Badges and plans to extend the scheme to other people with mobility difficulties who currently do not qualify. These new measures are believed to cost up to £55 million.
The Government is considering giving councils the authority to confiscate stolen or forged Blue Badges on the spot. This power would help to reduce vehicle crime, as well ensuring parking spaces close to vital ammenities are available for those who need it most.
Around 1 in every 200 Badges in circulation is reported as stolen each year.
Two measures have been suggested for helping councils to carry out this task:
1. A £10m national data sharing system to ensure stolen or forged Badges from outside a council’s local area can be easily identified for the first time.
2. The DfT is also looking at new technologies to make Badges harder to forge, including barcodes that can be read through windscreens.
The second action point in the strategy is to extend the Blue Badge scheme to include seriously disabled Armed Forces personnel and veterans, people with temporary but serious mobility problems, young children with specific disabilities and individuals with severe mental impairments; thereby helping more people to retain their mobility and independence in the face of physical and/or mental illness.
Finally, in a bid to standardise assessment for Blue Badges across the country, a new system of assessing eligibility for the Blue Badge is also being developed. This will mean dedicated independent medical assessors, who will ensure that only those who really need a Badge receive one.
A scheme to encourage the scrapping of old cars to increase the rate at which motorists trade them for newer, more fuel-efficient models, could achieve environmental benefits according to new research published last week by the Royal Automobile Club Foundation.
The report, Car Ownership in Great Britain*, concludes that financial encouragement for car owners to scrap older vehicles could encourage fleet renewal, but intervention must be done carefully if the vehicle market is not to be distorted. The report relates to use of vehicles but policy must also take account of the environmental implications involved in the manufacture of new vehicles.
The research shows that in the UK, to reduce emissions, the ideal age to incentivise car scrappage would be for 17-18 year old cars. Such a scheme would remove most of the last non-catalytic cars. Incentivising the scrappage of younger cars would only result in payment being made for cars which are going to be scrapped in large numbers anyway.
Encouraging motorists to switch to newer models is a vital part of the fight to cut carbon emissions from road transport. The average new car emits 3.8% less carbon than just 12 months ago (158.6g/km, down from 164.9g/km at the end of 2007) and 16.4% less than the in 1997 (189.8g/km)**.
Despite this, tax changes announced in the March budget, including the introduction of a “showroom tax,” will make buying a new vehicle more expensive. The Treasury’s decision to raise Vehicle Excise Duty retrospectively also increases the financial burden of owning the more fuel-hungry older cars, leaving motorists stuck with inefficient vehicles.
The credit crunch is also slowing the rate at which people buy new cars, with sales falling for the last five months***.
The RAC Foundation believes that a carefully-designed scrappage scheme would have a double benefit of boosting the new and second hand car industry, whilst helping to make road transport greener by removing the most-polluting vehicles from the road.
According to the report, cars are scrapped for four main reasons:-
· The car is too expensive to repair
· The car has been in an accident
· The car was not worth very much money
· The car had stopped working
Scrapped cars are not normally replaced by brand new models, but by vehicles typically three to four years younger than the ones scrapped. A vehicle purchased brand new typically replaces a three year old car which has been traded in on the basis of age and mileage. Most new cars are traded in within 4 years.
The Foundation commissioned the report after scrappage was recommended by the Environmental Audit Committee**** as a means of encouraging “lower income households … to trade in their cars for low emission replacements,” in order to offer an informed contribution to the debate.
Schemes can offer payments not linked to further action by the car owner, or payments conditional on purchase of a less-polluting newer car. The RAC Foundation’s report concludes that in the UK, it would not be necessary to link the incentive to buying a new car as the natural dynamics of the car market will lead to the owners buying a car three or four years younger than the one scrapped, which in turn would lead to a ripple effect of car purchases up the age chain of the vehicle parc.
The Foundation has rejected the alternatives of higher taxes on older cars, calculated on the basis of their emissions; or more rigorous annual inspection routines which make older cars more expensive to maintain, as these will place a heavier financial burden on the owners of older cars, who tend to be lower income motorists in the first place.
Commenting, RAC Foundation Director Stephen Glaister said: “Making it affordable for motorists to scrap clapped-out cars and opt instead for a cleaner, more fuel-efficient and more reliable vehicle could be a way for the Government to support greener motoring. This study identifies a number of countries that have tried scrappage schemes and offers important new evidence to help design a balanced and effective scheme for Britain. This is an essential ingredient of a proper “dust-to-dust” emissions assessment.”
“Motorists can’t afford to be on the receiving end of another muddled, poorly thought out scheme like the VED proposals unveiled in March. Any scrappage scheme should be further researched before implementation in order to benefit the environment, motorists and manufacturers, without distorting the market.”
Sources:
* Car Ownership in Great Britain. Prepared for the RAC Foundation by David Leibling.
**SMMT, ninth annual sustainability report, 2008
*** SMMT figures reported in http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/06/automotive.creditcrunch
**** Vehicle Excise Duty as an Environmental Tax: “We recommend that the Treasury urgently reviews and consults on how lower income households could be economically supported to trade in their cars for low emission replacements. In particular, we recommend that the Treasury urgently examines the proposal for a “car scrappage scheme”, which would provide payments in return for taking high emission cars off the road. In any scheme that were implemented, it would be important to ensure that high emission vehicles were genuinely scrapped—with as much of their materials recycled as possible—rather than allowed to stay on the road under different ownership, for instance in another country. (Paragraph 38)”
Road Pricing, could be part of the solution to the nation’s transport problems according to the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) ‘The state of the nation: Transport’ report, launched yesterday.
A poll commissioned by the ICE found that 60% of the UK population think that road user charging is fairer than car tax, when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions and improving transport.
The Foundation has long supported a national system of road pricing, to help elievate congestion, provide a better transport network and refocus the cost of motoring onto use, rather than the ownership of cars. Since the infamous No. 10 petition in early 2007, which attracted over 1.8 million signatures against the concept of road pricing, there has been little political or public support for the idea, but this new research signifies that opinion is changing once again.
Source: ICE – http://www.ice.org.uk/state_of_the_nation/index.asp
Over two thirds of accidents and almost half of all road deaths occur in our towns and cities*, according to the RAC Foundation, who are today highlighting the dangers of texting whilst driving in urban areas in support of European Road Safety Day** (13)
Recent research by the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory commissioned by the RAC Foundation*** found that the dual task of writing a text message whilst driving significantly impaired driving ability. This has serious consequences for town centre and city driving where there are more pedestrians and cyclists.
Reaction times in the simulator study increased from 1.2 to 1.6 seconds when drivers were texting, and their ability to see hazards decreased. Drivers tended to reduce their speeds but in real city driving situations this type of behaviour would cause difficulties.
96% of pedestrian and 93% of cyclist casualties occur in built up areas and ‘failure to look’ is the single largest contributory factor in accidents, present in 35% of cases*. The Foundation is urging motorists, especially those in London, the North West and West Midlands where urban casualties make up a significant proportion of all road accidents****, to ensure they are not distracted by mobile phones whilst driving.
Elizabeth Dainton, Research Development Manager of the RAC Foundation says:
“The distraction caused by sending or reading text messages whilst driving has serious implications for road safety. Being distracted by a mobile phone significantly reduces a driver’s awareness and reaction times.”
“On fast changing urban roads, where more people are walking or cycling, texting, even whilst stationary in traffic, can result in distraction that leads to an accident. Where driving is concerned- there’s no such thing as safe text”
* Department for Transport (2008) Road Casualty Statistics 2007 Edition
** About European Road Safety Day
The European Union has set itself the target to halve the number of fatalities on our roads – from 54 000 to 27 000 – between 2001 and 2010. In order to raise awareness, to give visibility to best local practices and to offer an opportunity to work together for safer roads in Europe the Commission has established a European Road Safety Day. The second road safety day will be celebrated on 13 October 2008 and will address the subject of “Road Safety in our Cities”. The main event will take place in Paris, at the “Espace Grande Arche”, in the business district of La Défense. For more information please visit: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety/road_safety_days/index_2008_en.htm
*** The Effect of Text Messaging on Driver Behaviour, A simulator study, N. Reed and R. Robbins, Transport Research Laboratory, September 2008
**** Proportion of all casualties by region, occurring on built-up roads. Source: Department for Transport (2008) Road Casualty Statistics 2007 Edition.
London: 96%
North West: 77%
West Midlands: 73%
Yorkshire and Humber: 72%
Average for Great Britain: 68%
North East: 65%
South East: 62%
East Midlands: 58%
South West: 56%
East of England: 55%
With the Winter fast approaching, sniffles, red noses and bouts of sneezing are sadly becoming more and more commonplace. However, who would have thought that more than 2 million motorists in the UK have experienced an accident, near miss or a momentary loss of control whilst driving, as a result of sneezing? *
But why is sneezing at the wheel so dangerous?
Sneezing causes humans to suffer the following reflexes- raising your hands to your face and closing your eyes; neither of which aid safe driving.
As far as preventing sneezing as a symptom of having the cold or flu, you can of course do your best to keep warm and top up on your vitamin C. Other sneezing triggers which can be substantially reduced include the following:
- Dust! Forget the ‘big Spring clean’ keep the inside of your car a dust- free zone all year round.
- Monitor your beauty regime! Try not to over- do spraying your perfume or aftershave as these particles can irritate receptors in your nose too.
- Keep the ambience clean and fresh. Ditch over-powering in- car fragrances.
- Close your windows! Not only will this help keep you warm but it will also reduce particles from car exhausts and other pollutants from entering your car and tickling your nostrils.
‘Sneezing once whilst driving at 70mph could mean travelling almost 300ft with your eyes closed.’
Professor Lipworth, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee
*Research commissioned by Esure car insurance
Posted on behalf of Fiona Coyne
The appointment of leading transport expert Professor Stephen Glaister CBE as the new Director of the Royal Automobile Club Foundation has been announced today (25 April).
Professor Glaister will lead the development of the Foundation’s policy and research programmes and be the Foundation’s principal spokesman. He will ensure that realism about transport, and the interests of the responsible road user, are properly represented to the Government and media.
Glaister is currently Professor of Transport and Infrastructure at Imperial College, London. He has written on a wide range of transport subjects, including roads, railways and the London Underground, and is a member of a number of high-level transport boards and committees. He has been an adviser to Government, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Transport, the Rail Regulator and other organisations.
Professor Glaister was also one of the authors of Motoring Towards 2050: Roads and Reality; the RAC Foundation’s study on road investment and pricing strategy for the next 35 years, published in November 2007.
He said: “It is a privilege to be taking over the leadership of the Foundation, especially at such a critical time for transport policy.
“Roads are by far the most important physical infrastructure for meeting the day-to-day needs of the individual and the economy, but successive Governments have not given them nearly enough care and attention.
“We have collectively yet to find acceptable and balanced policies to combat ever worsening congestion. And we all must explore the contribution road users need to make to solve the issue of climate change.
“The Foundation is an independent body, and I aim to build on its considerable achievements in developing fact-based, objective arguments on all issues relating to the responsible road user. Part of that is the important role public transport plays and how all forms of transport work well together.”
Commenting on the appointment, RAC Foundation Chairman David Holmes said: “We are delighted that we have secured someone of Stephen Glaister’s recognised distinction to be our new Director. This appointment will strengthen our reputation as an authoritative and independent contributor to the transport debate. Besides being one of the leading transport economists in the country, Stephen is an accomplished communicator on radio, TV and the press.
At the same time, we will continue to speak up for the responsible motorist on the many issues that affect us all day to day, and campaign to make the roads safer.”
David was also delighted to announce the Foundation’s current Acting Director and Head of Campaigns Sheila Rainger would be promoted to the role of Deputy Director when Stephen takes up his appointment.
He said “Sheila has teken on the Acting Director role with great energy, expertise and enthusiasm, and the role of Deputy Director is well deserved.”
More of Britain’s roads could be designed with the safety of motorcyclists in mind thanks to a new website launched today.
For the first time, the award-winning Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers Guidelines for Motorcycling are available online at
www.motorcycleguidelines.org.uk.
Broken down into individual chapters it explains how motorcycles need to be considered in policy, design and maintenance, parking and road safety.
Motorcycling is an increasingly popular alternative to the car, cutting congestion in urban areas and providing low-cost mobility in rural areas . Advantages of the motorcycle include independence and mobility; greater access to employment opportunities; and shorter journey times in congested traffic conditions. However, the specific needs of motorcyclists must be taken into account in the design, operation and maintenance of the road environment if road safety is to be maximised.
The website, funded by the Department for Transport and IHIE with support from the RAC Foundation, provides authoritative and practical advice to highways engineers and traffic managers on how to engineer a safer transport environment for motorcycles, mopeds and scooters.
The Government’s Motorcycling Strategy, published in February 2005, set out a plan of action to improve the safety of motorcyclists by facilitating motorcycling as a choice of travel within a safe and sustainable transport framework. The Motorcycling Guidelines website has been created as part of this Strategy.
Launching the new site, Road Safety Minister Jim Fitzpatrick said:
“This website makes the excellent IHIE motorcycling guidelines available to the widest possible audience. Projects like this show the real benefits of the Government’s Motorcycling Strategy, which has brought together a range of expert groups all working towards making motorcyclists safer.
“Motorcyclists are one of the most vulnerable groups on British roads today. They account for just 1% of all road traffic, but for 20% of all those killed or seriously injured. That is why the Government is fully committed to reducing motorcycle casualties and in our Motorcycling Strategy we outlined a series of measures to reduce motorcycle casualties and improve conditions for motorcyclists.”
Sheila Rainger, Acting Director of the RAC Foundation, said “We are delighted to support the Guidelines for Motorcycling website. The motorcycle plays an essential role as a congestion-buster in our cities and an affordable transport option in rural areas. Making the IHIE Guidelines for Motorcycling on available on the internet will help to create a safer environment for riders.”
Urgent and decisive action is needed to bring a halt to the motoring misery caused by over-running road works, according to the RAC Foundation, as the 2008 ALARM survey reveals today (2) for the first time the true number of trenches dug by utility companies.
Every year across England and Wales utility companies are putting 2.5 million trenches into local authority roads – the equivalent of 1500 Albert Halls of holes* – and the congestion that results costs the UK an enormous £8.6 billion**.
The ALARM survey also reveals that the average local authority road surface will be eligible for a pension before its turn comes up for resurfacing: due to lack of funds, the average wait for resurfacing is now 65 years.
The RAC Foundation has been running a campaign for years to try to reduce the chaos caused by long drawn out and un-coordinated roadworks.
Long-delayed powers set out in the 1991 New Roads and Streetworks Act and 2004 Traffic Management Act will be available to local authorities from 1 April 2008. The Foundation is urging all councils to make maximum use of these new powers*** to penalize those firms who refuse to co-ordinate their works with others, who fail to complete works in time, or who leave the road surface in a dangerous state and refuse to pick up the tab for repairs.
The Foundation has also warned that fines imposed on companies who dig up our roads must not just be passed on to the consumer. Stricter financial penalties should improve the speed and performance of utility and telecoms companies, and are the only way to minimise the £8.6 billion pounds worth of delays suffered each year by road users.
Sheila Rainger, Acting Director of the RAC Foundation, said: “Trenches dug by utility companies cause congestion and delay, and can permanently weaken the road surface. Councils, who are already struggling to fund properly planned maintenance, are too often forced to “patch and mend” in their wake.
“The Traffic Management Act increases the powers of local authorities in England and Wales to set binding start and finish dates, order re-surfacing work, and fine those companies who abuse the system. We urge all local authorities to exercise these powers as strongly as possible, whether through the new fixed penalty schemes or through court action.”
NOTES
* The 2008 ALARM survey calculates that 2.5 million trenches equates to 150 million cubic metres. The volume of the Albert Hall is 100,000 cubic metres.
** The Department for Transport’s follow-up consultation on Notices, Directions and Restrictions, Fixed Penalty Notices and revision of the Charges for Unreasonably Prolonged Occupation of the Highway showed that the cost of congestion of the then estimated 1.1 million holes came out at £4.3 billion.
*** The Traffic Management Permit Scheme (England) Regulations 2007
