Road Safety Seminar
- Type of event: One day Seminar
- Attendees: 85
- Learning on offer: Presentations, workshops, informal networking
Road safety experts from around the UK - and as far afield as Cyprus and Hong Kong - gathered in Birmingham in February to try to address the road safety challenges that lie ahead during difficult financial times.
Entitled "Road Safety in a Time of Reduced Public Spending", the seminar took a close look at the challenges faced by road safety professionals in the current economic climate and highlighted the importance of evidence-based practice and evaluation in making the most of tight budgets.
Indeed, in light of decreased budgets - especially within local authorities - RoSPA's annual three-day road safety congress became a one-day seminar to enable as many delegates as possible to attend. It was extremely encouraging to see so many road safety professionals present, and pleasing to listen to some interesting ideas.
Delivering road safety interventions is going to be a challenge; not just in the UK, but all around the world and it is vital that all the good work that has been done is not undone in the coming months.
In the seminar's welcome address, Tom Mullarkey, RoSPA's chief executive, pledged RoSPA's commitment to the UN's Decade of Action for Road Safety, saying: "With 1.3million people killed in road accidents around the world, and tens of millions injured, Britain must play its part in the UN's Decade of Action."
Presentations came from a diverse group of road safety professionals:
Tackling the Deficit: What cost to road safety?
Robert Gifford, executive director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), took a quick look back at the history of road safety before looking forward to the future. The UK has had targets to reduce the number of people killed and injured on the road since the mid 1980s. However, although the Department for Transport is committed to publishing a new strategic framework for road safety, it's not yet clear whether it will include any form of casualty reduction target.
Robert told the seminar that the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Report published recently shows that countries with casualty reduction targets achieve between four per cent and 19 per cent more reduction in casualties than those without targets.
Road safety as a discipline fits nicely into the Government's Big Society idea: it already brings together many different groups from police and local authorities, to individuals and charities such as RoSPA.
So, what are the challenges in the near future? Communication and co-ordination between organisations should be brought to the forefront; to ensure that road safety professionals are not constantly reinventing the wheel. Behavioural change among drivers will be another big challenge: how do we get people to truly change their behaviour - permanently?
Predicting causes, maximising interventions
South Yorkshire's approach to reducing casualties on the roads draws on crime and disorder problem-solving. Frances Adams, partnership director of the South Yorkshire Local Transport Plan Partnership and chief superintendent Keith Lumley, head of operational support services at South Yorkshire Police, talked about how road safety is being tackled in their region.
Some good work had been done in the past, but it was found that the partnership was not making the best use of resources, and that the approach was reactive rather than proactive. Additionally, there was very little evaluation of interventions. This approach was by no means failing; they were on target and doing well. However, it was time for a review if the partnership was to avoid stagnation and improve further.
The team wanted to ensure that the focus was on the correct elements contributing to serious and fatal road accidents in order to make the best use of the available resources. For example: if there is an over-focus on the victim, crucial information about the location or timing of the accident may be overlooked. Essentially, road safety professionals should be looking at the wider picture.
Just what is your problem?
This was the question posed by Karen Jackson and Dr Martin Langham, psychologists from User Perspective Ltd. Accidents don't have a single cause - there are usually three or four factors working together. This makes understanding the real problem difficult.
It is common for humans to identify phenomena, not causes. Loss of control, for example, is a phenomenon - not a cause of an accident. The more pertinent question would be: what caused the loss of control?
What's more, road safety interventions are sometimes based upon perceived problems, not real problems - and this is obviously not a good use of resources. This can be compounded by outside pressures, perhaps from the media or the public, to "do something".
So, which intervention would you choose if you haven't correctly identified the cause? Good question. And can you afford to implement the wrong intervention? The answer, especially now, is almost certainly "no". Again, access to effective information and research is key.
Behavioural change techniques
Dr Fiona Fylan, consultant health psychologist at Leeds Metropolitan University, has been looking at behavioural change techniques used in road safety schemes for young people. With predictions of behavioural decision, there tends to be a focus on healthy eating, smoking, etc. There is no reason why the techniques used in these areas cannot be transferred to road safety.
Schemes delivered by road safety professionals tend to use the same limited number of techniques, regardless of who is delivering the course, and what is being delivered. The project found that schemes are rarely theory-led, and rarely evidence-based - and that they are only occasionally evaluated, with a tendency to focus on attitudes and ignore other behavioural predictors. Although such schemes are effective in the short term, they fail to achieve long-term behavioural change.
So why aren't more techniques used? Often, road safety professionals don't have time to use new techniques; and such techniques are often developed in isolation and are not widely known. The way forward must involve interventions developed using more techniques, full support from teachers, more interaction with young people and follow-up work undertaken. And, of course, evaluation using both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Research as an investment
Ian Proctor, road safety manager at Kent County Council, and Guy Rollinson, manager of the roads policing intelligence unit at Kent Police, spoke to delegates about road safety in Kent and the Kent and Medway Casualty Reduction Group.
The group has been using research-led priorities in planning interventions and has been undertaking evaluation of their effectiveness. They also understand the role of research findings in influencing decision makers - crucial when budgets are under scrutiny.
Kent County Council has adopted the stance that if something cannot be evaluated, it shouldn't be undertaken, and are promoting radical approaches to research.
Evidence-based practice
Poppy Husband, an evidence based researcher with Devon County Council, gave a presentation on how to aid decision making on a reduced budget. She argued that more investment in interventions that are shown to work is a more effective use of resources - especially important when budgets are limited.
However, there is a lack of robust evaluation surrounding road safety interventions. Poppy believes that we need to adopt a systematic approach to research and evaluation, looking at a wide variety of information - not just collisions themselves, but risks and driver behaviour. The more information that is available, the more chance organisations have of getting an intervention right first time.
Taking note of this research, Kevin Clinton, head of road safety at RoSPA, talked about a project to make evaluation easier for practitioners. As part of the ETP Evaluation Project team, together with the DfT and local authorities, RoSPA has taken a look at how to approach evaluation within road safety.
The purpose of the project was to provide an easy-to-use toolkit for road safety interventions for all target groups - local highway authorities, emergency services, councils (and others). It would be a free to use product available to anyone, and for use again and again.
After several workshops, question set trials, academic peer reviews, and beta testing of the website, the E-Valu-It website at www.roadsafetyevaluation.com was launched last December - and is proving to be extremely popular. It is hoped that the challenges posed by lack of staff time and skills will be addressed by the toolkit, and enable many more projects to be evaluated in the future.
SRS Culture
Lyn Morris, head of road safety for SRS Culture, officially launched the project at the Road Safety Seminar. The aim is to provide ongoing road safety education to as many groups of road users as possible. The more you know and understand about your environment, the safer you are in it - and this applies to all walks of life.
In conclusion
The seminar, which was sponsored by Britax, was a great success, with road safety professionals taking away plenty of new ideas and ammunition for securing budgets over the coming months. Although there was an understandable anxiety about what the future holds, there was also optimism as people vowed not to allow complacency to take hold.
Although great strides have been made in road safety, the work is not yet finished.
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