New road safety fund must be used wisely

RoadSafe welcomes the announcement by Transport Secretary Alistair Darling that more money and more flexibility for local authorities to deliver safety on the roads.

It was announced yesterday that safety cameras will now be looked at as part of overall local road safety plans and the current system of funding them through fines will be ended. That system will be replaced by a new central fund for road safety of £110m a year, exceeding the £93m currently spent by safety camera partnerships. This will be in addition to road safety funding allocated through the local transport settlement.

In welcoming the announcement, RoadSafe director Adrian Walsh urged caution: ‘ ‘RoadSafe has campaigned for some years for a more hollistic approach to speed management. Local councils will now be able to use the road safety fund to introduce a range of engineering measures including interactive signs and traffic calming on high risk roads. But these should be accompanied by improved local public education programmes. Most importantly new measures must be introduced using a scientific approach – far too frequently local elected members take decisions based on public opinion rather than sound evidence.’

The changes come as an independent four year report show cameras continue to have an important part to play with around 1,745 fewer people killed or seriously injured each year.