Memorandum by the Parliamentary Advisory
Council for Transport Safety (RTS 14)
ROAD TRAFFIC SPEED INQUIRY
PACTS welcomes this opportunity to contribute
to the Committee's inquiry into road traffic speed.
PACTS is an associate all-party group and registered
charity advising and informing Members of Parliament on road,
rail and air safety issues. It brings together technical expertise
from the public, private, academic and professional sectors to
promote research based solutions to identified transport safety
problems. Its objective is to promote transport safety legislation
to protect human life.
Road crashes are the eighth largest cause of
death in the world. By 2020, they will be the third largest. The
DTLR estimate that the economic value of preventing injury crashes
during 2000 would have been £12,170 million in 2000 prices
and values (DTLR, 2001b). This figure includes lost output, medical
and ambulance costs and human costs. When the total costs of police
work, insurance and damage to property are added for all crashes,
including damage-only, this figure swells to £16,959 million.
Speed management is central to road safety.
Speed is the biggest single contributory factor in road crashes.
In 2000 alone speed contributed to over 1,100 deaths and over
12,600 serious injuries in Britain (DTLR, 2001c).
Reducing the speeds of the fastest drivers would
yield greatest benefits in reducing death and injury on the roads
(Taylor et al, 2000). Not only is the likelihood of being involved
in a crash increased with faster speeds, but the severity of the
injuries sustained by both those people inside and outside a vehicle
also increases with speed. At 35 mph you are twice as likely to
kill someone as you are at 30 mph (DTLR, 1999). Already 90 per
cent of pedestrians hit by a car travelling at 30 mph will be
seriously injured. Nearly half of them will be killed (DTLR, 2000).
The change from mainly survivable injuries to mainly fatal injuries
takes place at speeds of between about 30 and 40 mph, (Ashton,
1981).
Speeding is endemic. The majority of drivers
and riders regularly break the speed limit. In 2000 66 per cent
of car drivers exceeded the 30 mph limit in urban areas (DTLR,
2001d). According to self-reporting, 85 per cent of respondents
admitted to exceeding the speed limit on occasion, and there was
general agreement that "everyone did it" (Silcock et
at, 2000).
1. Below is a list of recommendations for
action by Government in order to tackle the problem of speeding
road traffic.
Speed management should be approached strategically,
in the context of wider objectives (emissions, economy, social
inclusion etc). Speed management requires active partnership between
national government, highway authorities, the police and all types
of road users. This should be formulated into a national speed
management strategy.
Across the various Departments, the Government
has many different targets and strategies and it will require
commitment to ensure that speed management is carried forward
as a priority amongst these. Practitioners will require guidance
on how to manage any conflicting policy demands. Joined-up thinking
must be robust to ensure that the speed management strategy is
not allowed to falter due to short-term backlashes and changes
in the political environment.
Partnership is vital to successful schemes:
the police, local communities and Local Authorities must be consulted
in the decision-making process. All relevant agencies and practitioners
should feel that the policies they are required to implement are
feasible and likely to succeed. Clear guidelines, and appropriate
legal, financial and human resources must back up policy recommendations.
The best value review process should also seek to support staff
carrying through policies with constructive advice and fair evaluation.
2. Compliance with the speed limit should
be made as easy as possible to achieve. Information to the driver
or rider regarding both the speed limit and the speed at which
they are travelling must be made absolutely clear.
Vehicle manufacturers should design the speedometer
to indicate more clearly and accurately when the vehicle is travelling
at 30 mph. Speedometers should not read as high as they do currently.
Even if the car is capable of travelling at 120 mph, it is unhelpful
for the speedometer to show 120 on its dial. Research should be
commissioned to identify how speedometers may be designed to enhance
safety, for example the benefits of digital versus dial displays
and the positioning of the speedometer within the car.
Signage, including use of road paint as well
as appropriate repeater signs, should be improved so that riders
and drivers are better informed and the speed limit is clear.
There is currently widespread confusion relating to the maximum
speed limit on single-carriageway roads, for example, and the
"national speed limit applies" sign has been very widely
criticised. Road users must feel that speed limits have been applied
consistently across areas. There should be improved information
available to road users as an interim stage, in the move towards
self-explaining roads.
3. The Home Secretary must retain road safety
as a core objective for the Police Service. The proposed National
Policing Plan must include traffic policing. Road safety professionals
should be invited to join the National Policing Forum. The Standards
Unit must identify best practice for traffic policing. A suitable
methodology for measuring the effectiveness of traffic policing
must be developed.
Effective speed management includes an element
of enforcement. PACTS' report on road traffic law (PACTS, 1999)
concluded that the law has an effect on two levels. First, it
defines acceptable standards of behaviour on the road and in doing
so provides guidance for all road users. Secondly, penalties provide
a deterrent for those who refuse to comply with the standards
written into the law. Thus, the enforcement (or failure so to
do) of road traffic law send a clear message both to the law breaker
and to society at large that offences on the road are a matter
of concern to society. Better enforcement of road traffic law
is a key theme of the government's own road safety strategy, Tomorrow's
Roads—safer for everyone. Reducing speed-related crashes
through the use of safety cameras has been highlighted by government
as a significant contribution to cutting road casualties. Those
areas of the country involved in the netting off pilot projects
have established encouraging joint ways of working to ensure that,
at local level, all statutory agencies are committed to casualty
reduction.
It is, therefore, very worrying that the recent
Home Office White Paper on police reform, Policing a New Century:
a blueprint for reform, fails to mention traffic policing as an
area of activity. It may be that this is an oversight by government.
However, PACTS would urge the Select Committee to give a clear
message to the Home Office that enforcement of road traffic law
is an important aspect of policy activity. Without this, it is
likely, as was the case in the Netherlands in the 1980s, road
casualties in the United Kingdom will begin to increase and the
10 year reduction target set in 2000 will not be met.
4. The concept of "self-explaining
roads" should be developed into meaningful guidelines for
practitioners.
Self-explaining roads have been suggested as
the next step in the design of a safe road environment. The intention
is that road design and layout should always provide consistent
and correct information on the type of road, and this in turn
will encourage drivers and riders to adjust their behaviour and
speed accordingly (Kaptein et al, 1998). It would be useful to
have more research into what aspects of the road environment have
the most influence on chosen speed. A pilot study to help identify
good practice guidelines for the development of self-explaining
roads would be very valuable for road safety practitioners.
5. The conclusions of the Government's review
of the Rural Road Hierarchy for Speed Management should be implemented
in partnership with the highway authorities. An equivalent review
should be undertaken for the urban road network. This would establish
a national framework for determining appropriate vehicle speeds
on all roads, defined by function and quality.
A national road hierarchy, which links the road
network sensibly with speed limits, covering both rural and urban
roads, should be adopted. A strategic approach to the management
of safety on rural roads should be developed following the proposals
in the IHT's guidelines for rural safety management (IHT, 1999).
Crashes which occur on rural roads are more likely to result in
death and serious injury than those on urban roads. 1,806 people
were killed on rural roads during 2000, and 13,511 people were
seriously injured. However, 70 per cent of all injury crashes
occur in urban areas, and serious and slight crashes are still
far more numerous, in absolute terms. In urban areas during last
year 1,414 people were killed, 23,243 people were seriously injured
and 197,074 people suffered slight injuries. The Rural Road Hierarchy
Review should therefore be extended to cover urban roads and should
be integrated with the urban safety management strategy developed
in 1990 (IHT, 1990) and trialed in the Gloucester Safer City Project.
The hierarchy should provide both flexibility
and consistency. A new national road hierarchy, with any associated
changes in speed limits, will require adequate publicity to ensure
the new system is successfully communicated to the road using
public. Although the aim is for the hierarchy to be largely self-enforcing,
with the limit being made obvious to road users and acceptable
to them, some enforcement effort should be available to ensure
that the new speed limits are observed. Even with a new framework,
liaison should take place between neighbouring Authorities regarding
cross-boundary roads, to ensure consistency. The new framework
should ideally be developed in good time to be taken into account
in the planning of the next round of Local Transport Plans, to
avoid significant delays to "changes on the ground".
The hierarchy must be functional, in the sense
that the current function and the desired future function of the
road should determine its tier within the hierarchy. The Government
Review indicates that a simple protocol should be developed for
assigning roads within the hierarchy. Particular attention should
be given within this protocol to those roads that serve a variety
of road users. The hierarchy must balance the needs of all road
users and where there is a conflict of needs, priority should
be given to the vulnerable road user. For example, through routes
that are also lined with residential developments, should respect
the needs of pedestrians and other vulnerable road users living
along these roads. If such conflict of needs is not resolved in
favour of the vulnerable road user, then policies to tackle social
exclusion within road safety will remain mere rhetoric.
6. A rural equivalent to the "Gloucester
Safer City Project" would help to identify where changes
in speed would offer most benefits in the rural environment, and
would provide experience of how these traffic speeds can be achieved.
A strategic approach is required for the management
of safety on rural roads, and an area-wide, monitored project
of this sort would help progress the guidelines produced by the
Institution of Highways and Transportation (IHT, 1999). These
guidelines indicate that the management of rural safety requires
a whole route approach to be adopted on the more motorised inter-urban
links to ensure a consistency of road features. On roads with
more mixed use, a separate strategy is required which will develop
more compatible use by all road users. For the lower Class C and
Unclassified roads, an area based approach is required. Traffic
calming measures should be applied on the approaches to small
towns and villages, as well as within the settlements to maintain
the slower speeds. Vehicle-activated signs should be used where
appropriate, and particularly to slow speeds at junctions. Provisions
should be made for safe waking and cycling between settlements
that are only short distances apart. Taylor et al (2000)
have recently identified that rural roads with very low speeds
have the most to gain in accident reduction per 1 mph change in
mean speed; they also concluded that on rural roads the accident
frequency is directly related to the proportion of drivers exceeding
the limit.
A rural equivalent to the "Gloucester Safer
City Project" would help to identify where changes in speed
would offer most benefits and would provide experience of how
these traffic speeds can be achieved. Early results from the Gloucester
Safer City project indicate that serious injuries and deaths are
down in the area by 38 per cent compared to the baseline average
for 1991-95, adult pedestrian casualties fell by 22 per cent and
child pedestrian casualties fell by 13 per cent (DTLR, 2001e).
While these provisional results should be read with caution since
the casualty figures are small and not statistically significant,
a similar rural trial project might also be used to develop the
"self-explaining road" and other initiatives in an area-wide
monitored project.
7. The Government should use the forthcoming
Safety Bill to develop a simpler method of making speed limit
orders, to give consistency within the speed management strategy.
A variety of policy measures over recent years
have given Local Authorities greater control over speed management
in their areas. The Transport Act 2000 gave Authorities the power
to designate any road a quiet lane or home zone with a speed limit
of 10 mph; the Local Government and Rating Act 1997 enabled parish
and town councils to contribute to traffic calming measures; while
the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 gave the Police and Local Authorities
the right to prioritise road safety work in their area. All these
measures are constructive for casualty reduction work, and a simplified
procedure for making speed limit orders would facilitate this
work even further.
8. Manufacturers should be required to advertise
vehicles responsibly, and without reference to speeding. In particular,
vehicles should be better adapted to being driven at slower speeds.
The justification for the manufacture of vehicles which can greatly
exceed the national speed limit should be carefully considered.
According to the relevant Transport Statistics
Bulletin (DTLR, 2001d), during 2000 55 per cent of cars exceeded
the 70 mph limit on motorways (54 per cent of motorcycles and
39 per cent of Light Goods Vehicles). Seventeen per cent of drivers
travelled at over 80 mph. There is a tension between the speeds
at which vehicles can travel and the roads which they are using.
When the maximum legal speed limit in the UK is 70 mph, there
is no justification for producing vehicles with top speeds up
to twice the legal limit. In the survey by Silcock et al into
"What Limits Speed?" many respondents cited ever more
powerful and comfortable cars as influencing their choice of speed.
High standards of in-car comfort with low levels of noise and
vibration contribute to the likelihood of drivers becoming isolated
from the accompanying sensations that travelling fast in vehicles
used to bring. This may mislead drivers into believing that they
are travelling more slowly than is actually the case.
9. Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) has
been predicted to bring enormous benefits in casualty reduction.
It should be further funded and researched. A national digital
road map with speed limits should be provided, to enable voluntary
fitment.
With externally activated speed limiters, speed
limits would become entirely self-enforcing. Research into External
Vehicle Speed Control was carried out between 1997-2000, and the
current ISA research commenced in January 2001. This project assessed
the safety benefits, the acceptability, the behaviour of drivers
and any side-effects. Initial trials have shown people to be more
positive about ISA once they have driven the pilot car.
Fitting 60 per cent of the vehicle fleet with
a mandatory-use, dynamic speed limit system of ISA would create
the optimum casualty savings. This could result in a 59 per cent
reduction in fatal crashes and a 36 per cent reduction in crashes
of all severities. It is difficult to estimate costs since the
price of technology will fall with time, however, cost-benefit
analysis suggests the benefits outweigh the costs by up to sixteen
times. Trials are already taking place in other European countries,
with 6000 ISA-fitted vehicles tested in Sweden and 20 tested in
the Netherlands. The DTLR hopes to place 20 ISA passenger cars
on the road for a trial in the UK, by mid-2002. This should be
expanded into field trials involving fleet vehicles which should
be monitored. An informed public debate is desirable. The UK is
active in European discussions on ISA, and ought to be more prominent
in carrying out the essential trials.
10. The Government should continue to publicise
widely the risks of speed. A successful communication strategy
is vital to changing road users' behaviour. The key to successful
publicity is to get the target group to identify themselves with
the problem, and to present advice on how they may contribute
to a lasting solution. Educational programmes for schoolchildren
can encourage them to think critically about how road danger arises,
leading to "education for change".
The development of a responsible attitude to
speed should be encouraged in schools and focused on during driver
training. Educational programmes for schoolchildren can go beyond
traditional messages about coping with danger to encourage children
to think critically about how road danger arises, an approach
sometimes called "education for change". The continuum
of risk and danger of inappropriate speed must be better communicated
to the road using public. "Cues" should be provided
to help people appreciate the risks and to encourage them to moderate
their behaviour accordingly.
Publicity campaigns have an important role in
changing public attitudes to enforcement of traffic law. The key
to success is to get the target group to identify themselves with
the problem, and to present advice on how they may contribute
to the solution. The study by Silcock et al (2000) found
that drivers and riders tend to distance themselves from the problem
of speeding and to blame others. Typically, there is a tendency
for drivers to create a dichotomy in their mind between "dangerous
speeding drivers" and "skilled and moderate speeding
drivers". Not surprisingly, the majority placed themselves
in the latter category. This effect is compounded by the fact
that most drivers overestimate their driving competence. In this
survey, the great majority of drivers rated their own driving
abilities as average or above. Carefully targeted publicity must
challenge these assumptions.
11. The position of the national press in
relation to speed should move towards that of local newspapers,
which more often reflect the requests by local residents for speeding
traffic to be slowed down. A programme of education should be
aimed at the media with regard to the dangers of speeding.
The image of driving is strongly influenced
by the media. There has been a lack of well-informed debate on
the issue of speeding in the national press. As a result, PACTS
recommends the DTLR should provide some kind of "rapid rebuttal
unit" to counter the barrage of criticism, myths and allegations
which have recently emerged in relation to the issue. A central
research point to which to refer critics would be useful. The
DTLR should also develop a national campaign to "pledge not
to speed", perhaps building on Brake's "Pledge to drive
safely" campaign, to raise the profile of the problem.
Local papers are often more supportive of road
safety concerns than the national press. Campaigns to reduce speeding
should therefore attempt to harness the support of the local media
and residents when and where this is evident, and work "from
the bottom up" to encourage speeding to be considered as
unacceptable as drink-driving. A MORI poll of 2,000 drivers' opinions
of speed cameras, for instance, revealed that seven out of 10
drivers already accept that well-placed cameras are a useful way
of reducing crashes and saving lives, while 80 per cent of drivers
do not believe that cameras are an infringement on people's civil
liberties (Brake, 2001). Indeed, the number of requests received
from the public for cameras to be introduced in their area substantially
exceeds the number of complaints about their operation. A review
by the Association of Chief Police Officers revealed that when
audits asked local people about road safety, 86 per cent of the
partnership areas rated it as an issue of concern to rank alongside
burglaries and muggings.
12. The cost recovery system for traffic
safety cameras should be promptly rolled-out on a fully national
basis. Money netted-off from the cameras should be available to
fund wider road safety work in the area where it is raised. All
speed fine notices should convey the dangers of speeding and advice
on how to slow down.
The DTLR's first year report of the cost recovery
system for traffic safety cameras identifies the great success
of this initiative, and the system should be promptly rolled-out
on a fully national basis. On average there were 47 per cent fewer
people killed and seriously injured at the camera sites, and the
initiative has been particularly successful in reducing casualties
among children and pedestrians. On average the percentage of drivers
exceeding the speed limit at pilot camera sites reduced from 55
per cent to 16 per cent (DTLR, 2001f). Speeding by more than 15
mph over the limit at camera sites has virtually been eliminated.
In Northamptonshire alone, 105 fewer people were killed and seriously
injured on the county's roads during the first year of the pilot,
than in the previous year.
The system should be subjected to regular evaluation
and strict operational criteria to ensure road casualty savings.
Money netted-off from the cameras should be available to fund
other road safety work in the area, wider than other camera schemes,
to include education, training and publicity, and also traffic
calming engineering measures. To maintain public confidence, Local
Authorities should publish how and where the fine income from
"netting-off" is being used to reduce road crashes.
All fine notices, including those which are entirely computer
generated, should be adapted to include an educational message
to help convey the dangers of speeding and advice on how to slow
down. The police should aim to reduce trigger speeds on cameras
as soon as is feasible. Local Authorities and police forces should
also analyse the profile of the group exceeding the speed limit
in order to target future programmes of activity. PACTS also believes
that the increased use of cameras should not lead to a reduction
of direct police enforcement activity. Traffic police officers
must continue to exercise the discretion of opting for prosecution
rather than a fixed penalty, particularly in the context of breaking
the speed limit in an urban area.
13. The conclusions of the Home Office review
of Road Traffic Penalties should be implemented at the earliest
possible opportunity.
There is widespread belief that the police allow
a fair degree of tolerance on top of the legal speed limit (Silcock,
2000). In the survey discussion group, the fines were considered
low and ineffective by the participants, who thought that the
addition of community service or driver improvement schemes would
have more of an impact. Disqualification is the most potent incentive
for change and acts as a significant deterrent to many drivers.
It is vital that the "special reasons not to disqualify"
are exercised consistently. PACTS would urge the Home Office to
review the practice of the courts in this area and to encourage
clearer guidance to magistrates to ensure that this discretion
is not abused, particularly by serial offenders. If research suggests
that many of those driving unlicensed have been disqualified from
driving for totting up speeding offences but do not view this
as a serious offence, then the greater use of disqualification
as a penalty will have limited effect. Under such circumstances,
temporary forfeiture of the vehicle may be a more effective punishment.
PACTS is unconvinced by the proposal to revalue
the penalty points system. If currently many drivers believe that
they have a certain number of "graces" before disqualification,
an increase of maximum penalty points to 20 from the present 12
may make that perception even stronger. If the Government intends
to press ahead with the revaluation, it will need to undertake
extensive advertising and public information campaigns to ensure
that drivers understand that this is a stiffening and not a weakening
of the status quo. The pattern of road traffic law and enforcement
is contingent upon by the legal process and the police service.
As long as these two take road traffic law and enforcement seriously,
the proposals contained in the Review, if implemented, will be
successful. One key role for the Home Office will be to use all
the means at its disposal to ensure that implementation is consistent
across police forces and the courts.
14. Local Authorities should measure the
distribution of speeds about the average as part of their routine
monitoring, to enable targeted intervention.
While there is a strong link between the likelihood
of a crash occurring and the speed at which drivers and riders
travel, this relationship is not simple. It is necessary to consider
the mean speed, the spread of speed about the mean, and extreme
speeds, (Taylor et al, 2000). To allow more effective targeting
for accident reduction, the routine speed monitoring used by Authorities
in the formulation of speed management strategies needs to include
measures of the distribution of speeds about the average.
15. Further research on the issue of speed
and crashes should be undertaken.
Further research is required to investigate
the effect of speed on incidents in different driving conditions
(dry/wet weather) and at different times of the day, as well as
for different accident types (severity, road user types, etc).
It is also necessary to know more about the effect of measures
implemented to modify speeding, on the characteristics of the
speed distribution.
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