Memorandum submitted by Brake
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
ON BRAKE'S
WORK
Brake is the national road safety charity, dedicated
to stopping deaths and injuries on roads and to caring for people
bereaved and affected by road crashes. Brake carries out research
into road users' attitudes on aspects of road safety, including
traffic law and its enforcement. It also works with people bereaved
and seriously injured in road crashes to campaign for changes
in the law, which will benefit road safety.
Brake is a registered charity funded by donations
and Government departments—Home Office, Department for Transport,
and the Department of Health.
Like anyone who breaks the law and endangers
lives, drivers who break laws on the road should expect to be
caught and punished for their risky behaviour. Drivers who cause
death and injury, or put their own and others' lives at risk through
their illegal driving; and companies running fleets of vehicles
which do not follow safe procedures, must be caught and deterred
through effective traffic policing.
Comprehensive traffic law and its enforcement
is central to Brake campaigning. Since our inception, we have
campaigned for better enforcement of improved traffic laws, which
is key to preventing deaths and injuries on roads as one of the
three critical "E"s—Engineering, Enforcement and
Education.
Answers to the inquiries specific questions:
Are traffic officers adequately resourced, trained
and supported?
No.
1. Ad hoc, officers across the country complain
of under-resourcing and lack of training. They do so with passion
and no small level of concern.
2. Some forces—a survey would be required
to say how many—appear to have entirely or partially disbanded
their traffic units, making traffic enforcement the duty of other
departments, such as armed response units who are routinely "on-road".
This is inadequate as traffic officers require specialist training.
3. Even if an officer is a dedicated traffic
officer, the committee needs to consider the range of duties a
traffic officer may undertake when considering their resourcing
levels. Sometimes traffic officers, for example, are also trained
to be Family Liaison Officers (FLOs). This duty involves working
with families bereaved by road death, and helping them through
the "police process". This duty in itself is very time
consuming (for example, attending court cases and inquests with
the family, visiting them in their home to explain the police
investigation, and generally being "on call" to answer
their questions). Yet even in this remit some forces are failing.
Some are so stretched that they only allow a family access to
a FLO if the death of their loved one is going to result in a
death by dangerous driving charge (in cases of road death, this
charge is much less common that lesser charges).
What impact has the joint Roads Policing Strategy
had on the work of traffic officers? How has it influenced the
priority given to roads policing and the resources invested?
None noted, but this may be the case in some
forces.
Have police forces across the UK got the balance
right between technology-led enforcement and officers carrying
out road policing duties? What evidence is there that the changing
balance between officers and technology has influenced casualty
reduction rates?
The following duties, and many others doubtless,
cannot be undertaken without officers present:
(a) tests for alcohol and drugs;
(c) mobile radar gun speed checks;
(d) vehicle maintenance checks;
(e) spotting driver tiredness or other impairments
(weaving);
(f) spotting mobile phone use;
(g) advice and information giving to drivers;
and
(h) community engagement (working with communities
to understand their enforcement needs).
Also, the coverage of speed cameras and ANPR
technology is often exaggerated. There are many sites where this
technolology should be used and it is not.
How effective and how efficient is roads policing
in reducing the number of road casualties?
In Victoria, Australia, there was a concerted
effort to increase traffic policing to tackle drink drivers. This
included increasing resources and also increasing powers. Police
are allowed to road block and randomly test at key locations and
key times (eg late at night near pubs and clubs). The results
have been significant decreases in drink driving.
Another important benefit of effective traffic
policing is its "link" to one of the other critical
Es—education. If traffic policing is effective, and clearly
present, then ad campaigns on TV, radio and in cinemas can be
created to support this policing—along the lines of "commit
an offence on the road and you WILL be caught." At present,
in the UK, there is no such evident deterrent, with the exception
of the use of speed cameras, which relates to only one, albeit
important, offence on roads, and, strangely, was not supported
by an ad campaign nationally.
Roads policing is particularly powerful at reducing
particular types of particularly dangerous road use. For example,
young, usually male, drivers who steal cars, or drive unlicensed
or uninsured, who speed, and take drugs and alcohol. Brake supports
families who have been bereaved by such drivers on a regular basis.
We frequently come across cases where a driver has been caught
driving unlicensed, been fined, but then chosen to drive unlicensed
and dangerously again and consequently killed. Offenders clearly
make these decisions to drive illegally because they do not think,
often rightly, that they will be caught. But the cost is often
someone's life.
In summary, roads policing is critical to road
safety, in the same way that policing our communities is critical
to general law and order, otherwise the law simply has no teeth.
Are police forces concentrating traffic enforcement
on the right areas and activities to achieve maximum casualty
reduction?
Brake has long-complained about the placement
of speed cameras. Nearly all cameras must, at present, be placed
where there have been casualties. We believe this is the wrong
approach. We should not have to wait for death or serious injury
before enforcing safety. We believe cameras should be in all communities,
around schools and homes, as well as on major trunk roads. The
Government has announced that it is changing the rules on camera
placement so we are hopeful that this will result in more cameras
in areas where there are people on foot and bicycles, who need
protecting from speeding drivers, as well as on light-traffic
rural roads which are often plagued by speeding, overtaking drivers
who can be lethal to themselves and other road users.
There should also be regular and high profile
traffic police checks, and panda car patrols, in communities of
all sizes. Most communities we talk to do not report evidence
of checks on seat belts, mobile phone use, or even radar gun speed
checks on a regular basis in their areas.
To what extent do approaches to traffic enforcement
and casualty reduction differ between forces across the country?
Widely in our experience. Some, for example,
have introduced "FIT" drug testing. Others have not.
Some have traffic units, others do not. Some have an annual "plan"
of enforcement checks—eg "this month it's seatbelts"—and
others do not. Some are heavily involved in community education
programmes—and others are not. Only a comprehensive survey—which
Brake intends to do this year—would help identify these
regional differences.
How have technological developments affected both
the detection and enforcement of drivers impaired through alcohol,
drugs and fatigue? Is the best use being made of these technologies?
What legislative, strategic and operational changes would improve
the effectiveness of these technologies?
Drugs: Brake welcomes the "FIT"
testing for drugs and is encouraged that a medical roadside test
for drugs is currently in development and wish this technology
to be approved successfully and used as soon as possible. However,
this needs to be supported by relevant laws—eg a law banning
driving on illegal drugs (there isn't one) and a law for killing
someone under the influence of illegal drugs (at present the law
has to prove the driver was impaired by the drugs, not just on
them). There also needs to be an effective high profile advertising
campaign on TV on the dangers of driving on drugs—there
has never been one.
Fatigue: Fatigue detection and enforcement
is still a difficult area although we are pleased that following
some high profile crashes—eg the Selby crash that killed
10 men—there have been detailed investigations that have
enabled fatigue to be proved (in this case, through internet records
proving the driver was awake the night before). For drivers at
work, the working hours regulations are not in line with academic
advice—which is that drivers should only drive if they have
had a good night's sleep, and should take regular breaks of at
least 15 minutes at least every two hours. We also need more national
TV advertising campaigns.
Alcohol: The main hindrance to effective
alcohol detection is the requirement for police to suspect an
offence has been committed (eg by spotting a weaving vehicle),
rather than the power to randomly stop vehicles in targeted locations
such as near pubs late at night. Brake has also campaigned for
the drink drive limit to be reduced—ours is among the highest
in Europe which conflicts with Government and Brake and local
authority campaigns encouraging drivers to have "not a drop".
However, we welcome the development of alco-locks
but would like to see their use rolled out. We also believe that
this use of technology to prevent offenders reoffending should
be expanded to use of tagging for unlicensed as well as drunk
drivers (see comments above about repeat offenders).
How will the new funding arrangement announced
by the Secretary of State affect the work of the road safety camera
partnerships?
It is hard to tell, although the Government
indicates it will be more money and therefore consequently we
can hope for more resources locally. If this includes resources
for engineering measures, such as safety zones around schools,
this will be a good thing, but we would not want to see a decrease
in cameras, rather an increase.
Brake, is concerned that the move by Government
to require expenditure on a range of RS measures, not just cameras,
is simply creating one more capital "pot" that locally
has to be bid for. Capital pots are inevitably restricted in size
by central Government.
Brake would prefer all funds from speed cameras
to be given to the areas in which the funds are collected, and
ploughed back into road safety measures in those areas, and for
all Local Transport Plans (LTPs) to be transparent in their expenditure
of funds on road safety measures, whether it is cameras or engineering.
Often it is difficult to work out how much has
been spent on specific road safety improvements, such as Home
Zones, and how much on other measures such as general road maintenance.
The Government doesn't even centrally record how many 20 mph limits
there are in the UK, so it is very hard even to know national
progress on development of road safety engineering issues that
are in dire need of development in many urban areas.
What lessons can be learned from the experience
of speed limit enforcement using camera technology?
2. It requires support through intensive
education campaigns.
3. The majority of people remain supportive
of cameras, despite a backlash from motoring organisations and
from some media.
4. Cameras slow down traffic and therefore
should be placed outside schools and communities—before
a death or injury has occurred, not after.
How effective are multi-agency approaches to safety
issues? What steps are required to improve partnership work between
the police, Department for Transport, local authorities and other
agencies?
1. There needs to be much more responsibility
taken by national Government to monitor what is occurring locally.
There should be recording of local activity by the DfT so it can
monitor progress, eg spread of 20 mph limits, use of speed cameras,
etc.
2. The DfT and the Home Office need to work
much closer together to understand the importance of road policing
and to ensure that it is at last a key objective on the national
policing plan.
3. While we have regional traffic policing,
police forces should be required to report levels of offending
in different areas of traffic to national government, eg alcohol,
drugs, mobile phone, seat belt, speed. They should then be required
to set targets, approved by the Home Office, for the following
year. There should be public "league tables" published
of performance in these areas.
4. At a local level, it is vital that the
Local Authority and the police service work together to support
each other. Local enforcement campaigns must be supported by local
advertising/education campaigns.
16 February 2006
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