Driving home the road safety message
Speed is the major contributory factor in between 500 and 1,000 accidents each year in Warwickshire leaving people injured or killed.
Warwickshire County Council has been fighting for some time to drive home the safer driving message and bring speeds down, and this has seen huge successes in reducing the number of incidents on the county’s roads.
Now in a bid to bring all these policies together the county council has developed a Speed Management Strategy.
This aims to combat excessive and inappropriate speed, with the following benefits:
- A reduction in the number of road casualties
- A reduction in demands on the emergency services
- Improvements to the quality of life in local communities
- Encouragement of more environmentally friendly methods of travel
- Improvements in the environment for walking, cycling, and horse riding
The strategy targets all three of the three ‘Es’ of road safety - Education, Engineering and Enforcement.
Education plays a major role in the strategy by increasing the awareness to road users to the problems caused by inappropriate speed. The Road Safety Unit operates schemes such as Speed Awareness Workshops, and working with local businesses. It also undertakes various local campaigns and initiatives and works positively with young drivers, who are most at risk.
The Safety Engineering Team of the Unit, which has casualty reduction as a priority, works to ensure that our highways are developed so that their layout encourages responsible driving, and thereby helps to reduce the number of crashes in which speed is a factor. The Team uses accident data provided by Warwickshire Police, in order to identify, and tackle, problems associated with inappropriate speed.
The strategy puts in place policies for the setting of local speed limits. These include the carrying out of a Speed Limit Review, which will follow Department for Transport guidelines.
Following on from the ongoing Village Speed limit Review the county council intends to undertake an Urban Speed Limit Review. In certain environmentally sensitive areas the introduction of 20mph speed limit zones may be considered.
The key to setting speed limits is that all speed limits, whether current or revised, need to be realistic and comprehensible to road users.
Finally, enforcement will continue to be an important tool in reducing excessive speed. Warwickshire Police has supported the development of the strategy, and is committed to using data-led intelligence to target specific speeding issues, and also addressing community concerns on speeding.
Speed Cameras will continue to play a vital role in saving lives on Warwickshire’s roads.
Cllr Martin Heatley, the county council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment, whose remit includes transport, said: “The new Speed Management Strategy will help to address some of the most common complaints from the people of Warwickshire. Speeding traffic causes problems for so many, and should no longer be tolerated as being socially acceptable.
“We and our families deserve to live in safe environments. Reducing the effects of traffic speeds and road casualties on our roads are some of the hardest tasks we have to deal with. This strategy can only help with the continual reduction in road casualties that our Road Safety Unit and others are achieving in Warwickshire.”
For more information or to download the strategy in full visit http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/roadsafety