Our Research Manager, Dr James Broun, on what the new Government can do to reduce deaths and injuries on the road.

On 5 July 2024, the UK woke up to a new Government and a new prime minister. After 14 years of Conservative-led rule, the Labour Party are in power with a huge majority in Parliament and a commitment to drive ‘change’. What should be top of the new Government’s in-tray when it comes to road safety?

Historically, the UK has been a global leader in road safety. The 1980s and early 2000s saw massive reductions in road fatalities, partly due to campaigns around seatbelt wearing, drink-driving and mobile phone use – campaigns which RoSPA spearheaded. The decade 2004 to 2013 saw a 47 per cent reduction in road fatalities. However, in the decade since, the reduction has only been 7 per cent.

While any progress is a good thing, in retrospect this latest decade looks like a wasted opportunity – a period of stagnation in road safety. Indeed, our European neighbours have mostly outpaced us. The UK’s road fatality reduction rate was the fifth-worst in the EU27 across this period. Sadly, in 2023, 1,645 people died on British roads and almost 28,000 more were seriously injured.

As someone relatively new to the sector I find these figures staggering. Of course they were much higher in the past, but can you imagine proposing a new mass transit system to the Government on the basis that it would ‘only’ kill or seriously injure 30,000 people a year? You’d be laughed out of the room. So we should not accept this status quo just because it’s what we’ve inherited.