Go Safe on Scotland's Roads: road safety framework to 2020
Go Safe on Scotland's Roads it's Everyone's Responsibility: Scotland's road safety framework to 2020.
Chapter Two
What we want to achieve
This chapter states our high-level vision for road safety in Scotland and the main priorities. It sets Scottish road safety targets to 2020 and places the Framework within the wider policy context.
2.1 Vision
Scotland's road safety vision is that there will be:
"A steady reduction in the numbers of those killed and those seriously injured, with the ultimate vision of a future where no-one is killed on Scotland's roads, and the injury rate is much reduced."
The Scottish Government believes that this is an ambitious vision and one capable of being shared by all. It is not a vision for a single point in time, but is on-going and aspirational. Success in the timescale of this Framework can be measured through progress towards Scottish road safety targets. We believe that all partners and every road user has a contribution to make towards the vision. For this reason the title of the Framework is
'Go Safe on Scotland's Roads - it's Everyone's Responsibility' .
2.2 Priorities
Chapters Five to Nine contain our priorities to be addressed. These are national Scottish priorities which have been identified through our public consultation exercise, expert opinion, research and statistics. There may be other local priorities, not mentioned in this document, on which local partners will also wish to focus and we encourage them to do so.
The priorities are not ordered or ranked to allow flexibility for local circumstances and to allow for changing trends and advances in technology. However, there are specific topics on which we do want to focus:
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These are the priorities which partners consistently tell us are important and need to be addressed and are those which we believe most need to be tackled in order to achieve the Scottish road safety targets and make headway towards our vision.
2.3 Scottish Road Safety Targets
"Road safety priorities should be statistically led from reliable crash and casualty data; focused on reducing the number of road casualties requiring hospital treatment and set to give greater priority to killed or serious injury crashes over slight or non injury crashes." (Local Authority)
Great Britain road safety targets since 1987 have helped focus attention on the need to achieve significant casualty reductions.
Current targets to 2010 set for GB by the Department for Transport ( DfT) in association with the Scottish and Welsh devolved administrations are:
- A 40% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured ( KSI) in road accidents;
- A 50% reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured; and
- A 10% reduction in the slight casualty rate, expressed as the number of people slightly injured per 100 million vehicle kilometres.
Against these targets, by 2007, Scotland had achieved, a 45% reduction in KSI, a 67% reduction in child KSI and a 35% reduction in the slight casualty rate. From a peak of 892 road deaths in Scotland in 1969, the number of fatal casualties has fallen to 281 in 2007. This is set against a picture of increasing volumes of traffic with vehicle kilometres rising 16% over the last ten years.
The principle of targets for road casualty reduction is fundamentally sound and there is a strong case for setting fresh targets based on Scottish achievement.
To maintain alignment with GB targets we will continue to work towards them until 2010 when Scottish casualty reduction targets will commence.
Figure one shows what we want to achieve by 2015 and 2020, compared with the average Scottish figures for 2004/08:
Figure one: Scottish road safety targets to 2020, with milestones at 2015
| Target |
2015 milestone % reduction |
2020 target % reduction |
|---|---|---|
| People killed |
30 |
40 |
| People seriously injured |
43 |
55 |
| Children (aged <16) killed |
35 |
50 |
| Children (aged <16) seriously injured |
50 |
65 |
In addition, we will continue the previous 10% reduction target in the slight casualty rate to 2020. We acknowledge partners' views of the value of gathering statistics and intelligence on this type of casualty as this may give an early indication of potentially more serious crashes.
We have concentrated on four Scottish targets which are aimed at reducing death and serious injury. We have separated deaths from serious injury as, in recent years, trends have been different for these with serious injuries falling steadily but deaths failing to achieve the same rate of decline.
The new targets are deliberately challenging, particularly for child deaths (which will be monitored using a three year rolling average due to the small numbers involved). Scotland's record for child deaths is proportionately worse than that of England and Wales and we want to rectify this. To help focus on our ambitious target, all child road deaths will be reviewed by key partners with recommendations for action, where appropriate, to help prevent the same set of circumstances repeating to cause the same outcome. Information from the reviews will be made available to Scottish Ministers.
We have included milestones at 2015 and this will be a key checkpoint for the Framework. However, we will also feedback progress towards the achievement of the targets annually.
The Scottish Government is asking partners to contribute to the overall achievement of the Scottish targets. We would also welcome recognition of the new Scottish road safety targets within the Single Outcome Agreements (see Section 2.5). This will serve to highlight the importance that is placed on making further progress on road safety across Scotland.
2.4 Benefits
Making progress on the targets makes sense on a number of grounds. Road accidents in which people are killed or injured result in high social and economic costs including a devastating impact on families, human pain and suffering, damage to vehicles and property, loss of productivity, demands on the emergency services, as well as medical and insurance costs.
To put the scale of the problem into perspective, the risk of death per hour while using the roads is over seven times higher than the risk of death per hour in the rest of everyday life. In addition, three times as many people die on the roads in Scotland as are killed in violent incidents. In an active life it is not possible to eliminate risk entirely but we believe it is unacceptable to tolerate such disproportionate risk in what is an unavoidable part of everyday life. 1
| The cost of fatalities The cost per fatality in Scotland in 2007 was estimated to be in the region of £1.65 million. 2 This valuation of costs is based on a 'willingness to pay human cost' approach. It is intended to encompass all aspects of the costs of casualties including both the human and direct economic costs. The human cost covers an amount to reflect the pain, grief and suffering to the casualty, relatives and friends and, for fatal casualties, the intrinsic loss of enjoyment of life. The economic cost covers loss of output due to injury and medical costs. |
As part of an annual road safety budget of £3 million and to help implement the Framework, the Scottish Government has made an initial commitment of £1 million per year for the period 2008/09 to 2010/11. Additional ongoing resources are already allocated in Central Government, including almost £1.9 million annually to Road Safety Scotland and over £7 million to the Safety Camera Programme, and from partners' budgets according to their priorities and plans. The Scottish Government, through Transport Scotland, is also committed to spending £1.3 billion, in the current three year spending review (2008/09 to 2010/11), on major infrastructure projects and network management for Scotland's strategic road network. This ambitious programme has already seen significant projects delivered while others are currently under construction and many more are programmed which will contribute to road safety.
This is a sound investment. The financial and resource benefits of any reduction in loss of life or injury on Scotland's roads are plain to see. The costs to the emergency services alone from road deaths are extremely high. The Fire and Rescue Service in Scotland has stated that they now attend more road fatalities than fire fatalities.
The benefits of not losing your life or that of a loved one on the roads are even clearer.
2.5 Approach of the Framework
The strategic diagram at Figure two summarises the relationships between the aims of this Framework and key strategic, policy and delivery vehicles. It also shows the main disciplines under which we will deliver the commitments with Evaluation underpinning the others.
Figure two: Road safety strategic diagram
There are a number of key drivers for the Framework. The starting point for any document of this nature is the Government's Economic Strategy. This is predicated on maximising Scotland's richest resource, its people. In a Scotland where the Purpose is 'to focus the Government and public services on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth' , we must all do our best to help contribute to the Scottish Government's strategic objectives. In the context of this Framework, we are seeking to ensure a Safer and Stronger Scotland on the roads, by working together to reduce the numbers of fatalities and seriously injured. This in turn will lead us towards a Wealthier and Fairer Scotland as the cost of lives lost and injuries sustained through traffic incidents is prohibitive both economically and emotionally. Whilst a Healthier and Smarter Scotland is one where we know how to take responsibility for our own safety on the road and where we also act responsibly towards other road users.
Scotland's National Transport Strategy, published in 2006, sets the context for all transport-related policies and this is reflected in this Road Safety Framework. Although, nationally, the car is a key focus of road safety, with car occupants accounting for approximately 62% of casualties each year, we will also focus on achieving a reduction in casualties from other modes of road travel, including pedestrian and cyclist casualties. We want these groups to make full use of the roads and to feel safe, confident and supported in doing so.
We have made a specific commitment in the Transport Strategy, carried through to the Equally Well Implementation Plan, to target children in disadvantaged areas who are at greater risk of injury in road accidents. We feel strongly that roads should be safe for all people, no matter where they live or what ethnicity, age or gender they are.
The Strategic Transport Projects Review ( STPR), published in 2009, directly supports this Road Safety Framework through a work programme which includes Transport Scotland's Strategic Road Safety Plan, route management and targeted upgrades to roads and road safety improvements throughout Scotland's trunk road network. There is also support through improvements to the rail network providing more and better alternative options to travel on the roads and provision of strategic 'park and ride' and 'park and choose' sites to make public transport more competitive with the car.
The Single Outcome Agreements ( SOAs) provide another impetus towards improving Scotland's road safety performance. SOAs are agreements between the Scottish Government and each council which set out how each will work in the future towards improving national outcomes for the local people in a way that reflects local circumstances and priorities. Many of the 2008/09 SOAs included reductions in road deaths and injuries as indicators of desired local outcomes. From 2009/10, all SOAs cover the range of Community Planning Partnerships' ( CPPs) responsibilities including those of local authorities, the police and other partners in road safety. In some areas, local priority for road safety has been evidenced through community safety audits and captured in local road casualty reduction strategies. We know that road safety issues attract public attention at a national level but that issues can also be very localised and we have been careful to ensure that the Framework is flexible enough to accommodate this.
Making a contribution through this Framework to the National Performance Framework, National Transport Strategy and local outcomes set out in the SOAs will come through a series of commitments each of which can be grouped under the traditional road safety 3 Es (Education, Engineering and Enforcement) plus Encouragement and Evaluation. Importantly, the commitments are brought together under a number of strategic aims that we believe capture the main pre-requisites to improving road safety in Scotland in the future:
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In the short term, we will work towards the achievement of the targets through the implementation of a series of proven measures. In the mid to long term we want to explore new ways of working together to join up the different functions of road safety to strengthen the impact of initiatives. We want to consider doing things which have been proven to work elsewhere, either in other parts of the United Kingdom or abroad. We are also keen to lead the way through piloting new road safety ideas and technologies in Scotland.
Road safety touches many areas of Central Government policy outwith Transport. Scottish Government Education, Health and Justice Directorates have contributed to this document. These contributions have included pressing the case with the UK Government for a reduction in the drink drive limit to ensuring road safety education produced by Road Safety Scotland ( RSS) is compliant with the Curriculum for Excellence framework.
As to delivery, this Framework will inform partners' road safety action plans, ensuring that we have a joined up approach to road safety. Some, such as the ACPOS Road Policing Strategy, will follow on from the publication of this Framework. Others, such as Transport Scotland's Strategic Road Safety Plan and RSS's Education Strategy, are already in place but have been taken into account and reviewed when producing this Framework.
Finally, while it is wholly appropriate and indeed essential to have a Scottish Road Safety Framework to meet the needs of people using Scotland's roads, a number of the laws affecting road safety are reserved to the UK Parliament. The DfT is coming to the end of a ten year Strategy and will be looking to produce another GB Strategy post 2010. The Scottish Government is working closely with DfT to ensure a complementary approach to road safety.
There are, however, a few areas where we are calling for changes in legislation which is reserved to the Westminster Parliament, for example, a lowering of the drink-drive limit. Our support for these changes will be substantiated with evidence and fully discussed and debated with UK Government Ministers and officials. However, where the UK Government will not commit to evidenced changes to legislation at a GB level, we will ask for the powers to be transferred to the Scottish Ministers through the mechanism provided in the Scotland Act 1998.
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