Brake Road Safety Week launch

Thank you for inviting me to join you during Road Safety Week.

BRAKE has a well-deserved reputation for raising awareness on this issue and as Road Safety Minister, I am happy to take this opportunity to support you in the campaign to reduce accidents and casualties.

BRAKE does a great job in highlighting the terrible loss and waste that each road tragedy represents.

And whether that means attracting the attention of the press as they have done so well today… or lobbying the Government or myself for that matter…. I think it’s important that organisations such as BRAKE keep up the pressure on everyone to help make our roads safer.

We may not always agree on every detail. And from time to time we may disagree on strategy.

But on the fundamental issue, I believe both we in Government and BRAKE are in complete agreement – one death on our roads is one too many.

Certainly, I can guarantee you that is true of myself and colleagues at the Department for Transport.

Because like you, we do not believe there is any “acceptable” level of child road deaths, just as there is no “acceptable” level of death or serious injuries for any other group.

You don’t like the numbers and we don’t like the numbers.

So the only question that remains is, “what’s the best way of getting these figures down further?”

The UK’s record over the past decade shows we are making progress.

Today, we have one of the safest road networks in Europe and we are renowned for having one of the most effective road safety media campaigns anywhere in the world.

And as I’m sure you know, the 2010 target the Government set itself – to half the number of children killed and seriously injured – was met four years ahead of time in 2006.

But we remain absolutely determined to keep those numbers going in the right direction.

The second three-yearly review of our road safety strategy published in February highlighted the fact that drink-driving, speeding and seat-belt wearing are still key issues that we need to work on.

The review also highlighted that some groups remain more at risk, especially young drivers, motorcyclists and those who drive for work.

As a result, the DfT is hard at work on a raft of new initiatives to target all these areas.

For example, the Think! campaign group launched a high profile scheme to focus on people Driving for Work.

This highlighted the dangers from distractions such as eating and drinking, reading maps or talking on a hands-free phone.

That’s being backed up with messages designed to show that proper journey planning can cut out a lot of these distractions, for example, by making time for proper breaks.

On top of that, we have the Safe and Fuel Efficient Driving programme – SAFED – and the Driving for Better Business scheme we’re conducting with RoadSafe.

But of course, we are not stopping at this one target group.

I met with the Motorcycle Action Group just last week to see how we can tackle the unacceptable level of motorcycle deaths and before that it was the British Motorcycle Federation and the Motor Cycle Industry Association.

Equally, some of you will already know that we will be consulting on plans to reform the whole driver training programme and I’m sure that BRAKE’s views will form a welcome contribution to the debate.

The same goes for the consultation we are planning on graduated fixed penalties for speeding around the same time.

And early in the New Year, we will be launching a consultation on wide-ranging proposals to tackle drink driving, which will be particularly focused on more and better enforcement across the country.

That is a short selection of just some of the plans we have in store. So it’s clear that wherever we might disagree, there is no lack of effort or commitment from officials, enforcement agencies or the Police.

All of us are listening to new ideas and looking for the most effective ways to keeping reducing the death toll all the time.

Take the 20 mph limit that has been mentioned so much today.

The research shows that this can have a major impact in reducing accidents, especially among children, so we’re absolutely in favour of lower speeds.

In fact, the DfT’s current guidelines call on local authorities to impose 20mph limits wherever it is appropriate.

But of course, the final decision must rest with the local authority since they are best placed to examine the specific circumstances of each location.

And I’m sure BRAKE’s local groups will not be slow to offer advice to local authorities where the situation demands it.

During this Road Safety Week, BRAKE is highlighting the safety of children on foot and bicycles.

It is great to see that BRAKE has attracted so much attention to the issue today as this is a group that has definitely not been forgotten about at the DfT.

In fact, the most recent Think! campaign called CopyCat  - which I should point out got precious little coverage in the media – is designed to remind parents that kids copy their behaviour.

This campaign is designed to highlight the fact that kids will copy parents’ bad habits as well as their good ones, so they need to be aware of what they are doing and how showing a poor example could expose their children to danger on the road.

The Government has also done a lot to promote Walking Buses for school kids and cycle training as part of our Bikeability programme, so once again we share the same objectives here.

Personally, I believe that everyone in society has a responsibility to look out for the safety of the youngest members of our community.

That includes drivers and that means raising their awareness of key safety issues.

At the same time, I believe that we need to start promoting road safety awareness at an early age and that process shouldn’t end when you reach 10, 16 or just because you pass a driving test.

We need to change attitudes to road safety right down the line.

We need to target diverse groups and age ranges with a combination of education, enforcement and technology.

And we need to make road safety a part of growing up, growing old and growing wise.

Working as allies, I believe we can fight this battle more effectively together and I hope that we can all make a commitment today to keep this issue firmly in the spotlight.

Thank you.

(This speech represented existing departmental policy but the words may not have been the same as those used by the Minister.)