Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
160-179)
MR KEVIN
CLINTON, MR
STEVE THORNTON,
MR STEVE
GREEN, MR
STUART SMITH
AND MS
JAN BERRY
30 APRIL 2008
Q160 Clive Efford: You had a member
in Derbyshire, I recall, who was very keen on that approach.
Mr Green: We may well have done,
I will have to associate myself with him. On that side is the
motoring lobby. At the other extreme tends to be the families
of those who have been killed or seriously injured on the road.
The views of those two groups are probably totally incompatible.
I think in the middle is the majority of the public and when you
look at surveys of that majority they tend to have a more pragmatic
view than perhaps the two extremes I have just described. What
we need to ensure is when policy is being made that it is genuinely
taking account of what the majority would accept rather than trying
to accommodate those two extremes. I have never found a way that
those two extremes can be accommodated. They should be listened
to, they often point up issues that need to be explored, but we
need to make sure that we hear the mainstream voice of the public
and of motoring, which I do not think gets represented that often
in the general debate.
Mr Thornton: Kevin has touched
on this when he has talked about responsibility. I do not think
we have engaged enough with local communities and road users as
a whole. We are still trying to say that professionals deliver
road safety and virtually exclude the influence that people can
have on their own safety and the safety of people they come into
contact with. It is really important to say that local people
deliver road safety as much as we do.
Q161 Clive Efford: Is there a level
of death and injury on our roads beyond which we cannot go and,
if so, what would you say it is?
Mr Clinton: Do you mean which
is acceptable?
Q162 Clive Efford: No death on a
road is acceptable, but is there a level beyond which it is not
possible to get?
Mr Clinton: So, in practice would
we ever reach a zero? Probably no, which is why I would say one
would not want to see a target zero whereas a vision zero is different.
I do not know what level would be the minimum we would ever get
whilst still being able to move about on the road. You cannot
have zero risk and we would not want zero risk because we do need
to move about, we do need to enjoy ourselves and have full lives.
I do not think one would ever practically get to a zero risk or
would even want to.
Mr Green: I think this must be
a direct correlation between how intrusively we are willing to
regulate and how much impact we can make on how far we can go.
We could say every driver on the road has to be retested every
six months to prove their competence, cars can only drive at five
miles an hour, I am taking extremes clearly, but it is about trying
to find a balance between an acceptable level of freedom and the
optimum reduction target that we can achieve. I do think there
are some real debates to be had about the future because if you
look at what technology can do in motorcars over the next 10 years,
the whole landscape of motoring could be changed if there was
a will to invest in those things and the infrastructure that goes
with them. If we are going to talk about how much should we reduce
it then we have to be clear about how that would be done and build
ambition on to some credible intention rather than just trying
to set a target because it sounds like a good thing to set and
is a laudable thing to support.
Q163 Clive Efford: My last question
is on public opinion and the media. What do you think about sections
of the media or road user groups that actively campaign against
road safety measures, such as speed cameras or speed limit enforcement?
What impact do you think they have on public attitudes towards
road safety?
Mr Thornton: There is a great
difference between national and local media. Certainly perceptions
in Westminster of things like opposition to traffic calming and
speed cameras are not what we are seeing out in the metropolitan
authorities. Everyone wants to be safe on the streets where they
live. My postbag is full of requests for traffic calming, speed
cameras, anything that will reduce the harmful effects of road
traffic. Vehicles driven at speed is the biggest problem followed
by parked vehicles, and this is coming across very strongly in
the media.
Q164 Mr Clelland: Has the partnership
you set up, Mr Thornton, been particularly successful and more
successful than others?
Mr Thornton: We have not had the
opposition from the press that other Safety Camera Partnerships
have had. That is just part of the Safer Roads Partnership. We
have been very open and gone to the media to make stories, to
give them information, and we sell their papers for them and they
are very keen on the information that we put out, but we try and
strike a balance.
Q165 Mr Clelland: Have you had fewer
casualties than other areas?
Mr Thornton: We met the 2010 target
for killed and serious injuries to children two years ago but
we do need to keep it there. Reducing casualties is not just linked
to the media, of course.
Q166 Mr Clelland: Why have other
areas not set up these partnerships? Does anyone have a view on
that?
Mr Smith: I think there are a
lot more partnerships than maybe you are aware of. The partnership
element of road safety is spreading throughout the UK. The majority
of Fire and Rescue Service, for example, is involved in partnership
working. It is a recognition that there is a whole range of agencies
which have got something to contribute towards road safety. One
of the changes that were recently made to the rules around Safety
Camera Partnerships and the use of funding, which was extremely
popular, was the fact that some of that funding that was seen
to be basically revenue-making can be directed towards education
now and that has been a really positive move which means that
people can see that some of these funds are being redirected into
education to help keep people safe.
Q167 Mrs Ellman: How reliable would
you say the official road casualty statistics are? Is there under-reporting
or are there differences in definition?
Ms Berry: Just from our experience,
you will only ever get the records of those events that we attend
so, therefore, with less road policing officers on the roads we
are not recording as many things as we probably did before. For
those events that we do record, we believe there are probably
better, simpler ways of recording which will improve the accuracy
and should reduce the amount of time that officers have to take
in order to complete the statistics. It is vitally important the
statistics we all use in order to make judgments about legislation,
enforcement and all the rest, are accurate and I suspect there
is a whole raft that goes unreported at the moment, but also what
we do I think we could make far simpler.
Q168 Mrs Ellman: What is the extent
of under-reporting and what are the reasons for it? Can you make
any judgment on that?
Ms Berry: Just from our point
of view, I think it is probably a lack of road policing officers
enforcing road laws at the moment. The incidents we have to attend
we will record, but that is very much the tip of the iceberg.
Mr Green: One thing I would say
absolutely categorically is there is no organised conspiracy to
under-record. There is no incentive to do so because there is
no result at the end of it, partly because so little priority
is given to road safety in the Home Office list of priorities.
I would not disagree with what Jan has said, there is certainly
something in that. When we look at minor collisions, or collisions
that on the face of it are very minor, sometimes people simply
do not ring the police or if they do, because it is not seen as
a serious incident, the police do not feel they need to attend.
My personal view is that at the fatal and serious end of collisions
we have probably got a pretty good record because we would be
called and we would go. It is at the less serious end that I think
there will be some fragilities in the figures. Even if the police
did attend, someone may well say at that point in time, "No,
I'm fine", wake up the following morning with a stiff neck,
unable to get out of bed, and because they have not started a
formal report with the police they might just go to their doctor
or hospital or whatever. There are logical reasons why figures
collected by the Health Service, say, might be different from
our own. Again, I do not think it is because there is any conspiracy
for that to happen, it is simply the way that these things get
recorded and reported. We are about to start investing huge amounts
of money in the Police Service in officers carrying hand-held
computers around with them. I know that working with DfT we are
going to offer up to every police force a standard accident reporting
software package that will work on those hand-held computers.
Maybe once we get that in, and that should come in in the next
couple of years, that will make it easier for officers to record
it, but it will not take away some of the things I have described
where some people do not realise they are injured until a day
or a couple of days later and those things will tend to slip out
of our statistics and appear in other peoples.
Q169 Mrs Ellman: Is there any way
that you could try to quantify that?
Mr Green: No, I am sorry, no way.
I am aware of the issues and I have probably listened to the same
radio programmes and read the same articles that you have about
the disparity between NHS statistics and police statistics, and
we have not done any objective research on it but we are not trying
to be in denial of it either, we fully accept those discrepancies
exist but cannot quantify the difference.
Mr Clinton: There is some research
which quantifies the difference between hospital accident data
from roads and police data. When I first started working in road
safety in the late 1980s one of the first research reports I read
was about this very issue, and my memory says it was something
like 60% of slight injuries were not recorded in police data but
were in hospital data. There is some quantifiable data. What I
am not sure about is any research which indicates how accurate
the hospital data is. Does that include things like a child getting
their hand caught in a car door on the drive, for instance? There
is a lot we do not know about this issue, but it is also true
to say that the STATS19 data gives a very comprehensive dataset
and we should not be too negative about that even though we recognise
it is by no means perfect.
Q170 Mrs Ellman: How clear is the
distinction between "serious" and "minor"
injuries on the police STATS19?
Mr Clinton: There is a written
definition but, of course, as has just been indicated, an officer
at the scene may not necessarily put them in the right category,
and to some extent that is probably inevitable. The definition
of "serious" is quite broad. It might include things
which you and I would say are not necessarily serious. There is
a written definition of what is "serious" and what is
"slight".
Mr Green: I think it is fair to
say that a broken finger or a life-changing brain injury are both
classified as serious injuries, so there is a very wide range
of injuries that are captured in that category.
Q171 Mrs Ellman: You are saying that
is within serious injuries that there is a wide range?
Mr Green: Yes.
Q172 Mrs Ellman: Are there any types
of injuries within the definition of minor injuries that could
be reclassified looking at it the other way round?
Ms Berry: This is a very similar
point to the one that Mr Green has just given, that if you go
to hospital and you are detained for observation overnight that
would be classed as a serious injury even though you might be
absolutely fine and not need any further medical attention the
next day. When you start making observations about the level of
serious injury, the difference between a life-changing injury
and where you have spent one night in hospital could actually
conjure up a totally different picture from the reality.
Q173 Mr Clelland: Mr Green, you have
been briefed?
Mr Green: Yes. Where "slight"
is concerned, it is anything that is not "serious",
there is no specific definition. There certainly is discussion
taking place between the Home Office, DfT and ourselves about
further classifying "serious" to try and look at the
different grades of it. I can see how that will paint a more accurate
picture but, as Jan, I am sure, would say, poor old cop at the
roadside has then got to try and work out exactly which box to
tick, as it were. The more sophisticated you make it, the more
difficult it is to collect unless someone does go to hospital
and you have got a more robust medical definition.
Q174 Mrs Ellman: In rail accidents
a different system is used. "Fatality equivalent" is
the category. Are you aware of that and does anybody think that
would be a better way of doing it?
Mr Green: I am not aware.
Ms Berry: Not aware.
Q175 Mrs Ellman: Are there any particular
categories of drivers on the road where you feel more attention
should be given in terms of road safety, particular socioeconomic
groups, age groups, young or old?
Mr Clinton: I think it is well-recognised
that young, inexperienced drivers are a high risk group. At-work
drivers certainly need to be a target, partly because of the nature
of the driving that they are required to do. Although we say there
are these high risk groups, we should not lose sight of the fact
that most drivers come under the general category of "other
experienced drivers" but very, very few of them would actually
take any further training after their test, so there is a broad
issue which we are beginning to look at which is lifelong driver
development and refresher training throughout people's driving
careers.
Ms Berry: We have given evidence
previously around novice drivers and drivers who are quite young
and that will be a continuing concern. There is always a danger
that you can link absolutely every category to having an element
of danger. Also, the elderly pose a particular risk and people
who are maybe in a certain socioeconomic position will also pose
a particular risk where they cannot afford necessarily to travel
on public transport and they cannot afford particularly well-maintained
vehicles and may take risks with uninsured vehicles and things
like that. There is a whole variety of different groups, each
of which probably needs slightly different strategies and tactics
to know how to deal with it.
Mr Smith: Clearly the Fire and
Rescue Service go to the most serious of incidents where there
is usually entrapment, so we are called on to extricate. When
we got involved in the road safety arena we were looking at the
risk analysis associated with where we should target our road
safety activity. There is undoubtedly a correlation, for example,
looking at where the drivers originate from rather than where
the accidents occur, a link to socioeconomic issues and deprivation.
Certainly as far as young drivers are concerned, they do feature
disproportionately in the accidents that we attend. We target
our road safety very much at young offenders, for example, those
who are not in education and training to try and make sure we
catch those who are not necessarily in the education system.
Mr Thornton: I agree with addressing
priorities, but we must not forget huge swathes of the population
who are driving badly and driving illegally. It is hard to target
young people when older people are misbehaving. In West Yorkshire,
the groups which are most caught by speed cameras are 35-44 and
45-54. They are the ones who are misbehaving and we should not
ignore that. We should not penalise young people without looking
at the wider problem.
Q176 Mrs Ellman: Ms Berry, you mentioned
older people on the road. There are more older people driving
with the changes in demography. Do you think that more enforcement
should be introduced in relation to the fitness of older people
to drive, or is this just a phenomenon that you are observing?
Ms Berry: It may be something
where some further research would be helpful. Clearly people over
a certain age need to have a medical certificate for their driving
licence to be renewed and they will also take that into account
maybe in the insurance premiums, but the robustness of some of
the medical examinations for some elderly people may need to be
reviewed, particularly in the way of eyesight and things like
that.
Mr Green: I want to augment that
point. It is a difficult issue, I know, but most people who have
got issues in later life which would question their fitness to
drive would be under some kind of active medical supervision or
consultation and, whilst not wishing to drive a coach and horses
through the medical practitioner's duty of confidentiality, surely
there ought to be some responsibility that if someone's fitness
to drive is in question then the medical practitioner has a duty
and an obligation to report that to the licensing authorities.
I do not think that is currently the situation. To allow someone
to walk out of the consulting room door knowing that they are
not fit to drive and not taking action is an indefensible position.
Q177 Mrs Ellman: So you are looking
at putting new responsibilities on doctors, say?
Mr Green: Yes.
Mr Clinton: There is an issue
here about education and help for drivers. There is not an age
at which people suddenly become unsafe to drive, and you can certainly
have 75 year-old drivers who are better and safer than 50 year-old
drivers, but there is an issue about education and raising awareness
about how our driving abilities change and providing help in terms
of extra assessments or training for drivers. Driving is something
which is fundamental to a lot of people's mobility and quality
of life, so what we do not want to see is a lot of people suddenly
becoming housebound because their licences have been taken away.
I would agree that there is more awareness needed in the medical
profession in terms of advising drivers when they need to stop
and from time to time we get members of family call who are desperate
to stop their elderly relative driving and the GP either will
not help them or has said this but the driver concerned is ignoring
them. There is certainly an issue there. I have something in the
back of my mind saying there is already a duty on a GP to report
to the DVLA, but I am not confident enough in my memory to say
that for certain. There is a consultation from the DfT on the
medical rules for driving which is looking at a lot of these issues.
For me, this is very much education, awareness and the provision
of training rather than a stricter enforcement issue.
Q178 Graham Stringer: How much of
a problem are people driving with drugs in their system, unlawful
drugs, and how do you know?
Ms Berry: Did you say lawful drugs?
Q179 Graham Stringer: Unlawful, and
prescription if you like. You can tell us about both.
Ms Berry: I think that is an unknown
quantity for a number of different reasons. If a fatality occurs
then clearly the toxicology reports will be able to tell us what
was in the system.
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