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Individual responsibility is a key road safety factor
Quoted in The Times, Owen Paterson, shadow roads minister said:
"Instead of the State laying down the rules, we need to give responsibility back to road users."
Safe Speed says that this is a crucial road safety 'truth'.
Individual responsibility is one of the three road safety key factors that have been squandered by recent policy.
The other two are 'skills' and 'attitudes'.
It’s time to get back to road safety policies which recognise and develop the three key safety factors - skills, attitudes and responsibilities.
The widely applied policies based on the idea that 'speed kills' have tended to remove individual responsibility, worsen attitudes and de-skill the driving process.
This is a deadly mistake that has, on average, made drivers worse costing thousands of lives.[1]
Article in the Times:
"'Naked' streets are safer, say Tories" http://tinyurl.com/235qzq
[1] Based on a simple extrapolation of earlier trends in road risk values, annual national road deaths would be down to around 2,000 per year by now.
Safe Speed research strongly confirms the hypothesis that the loss of trend is due to 'bad policy'.
The departure from long-term trend stated at the same time that we adopted policies based on the over simplified idea that 'speed kills'.
The page SafeSpeed published when they found the loss of trend in 2003: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/fatality.html
In the 2005 report. TRL629, TRL confirmed the Safe Speed claims that the loss of trend was due to 'drivers getting worse'.
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