Go Safe on Scotland's Roads: road safety framework to 2020

Chapter Five
Working together for safer roads

"With the many and wide range of organisations and agencies that are involved in road safety, from a national level through to regional level and down to local level, the important factor is that they must work together towards their common goal, to reduce the number of people killed and injured in road accidents."
(Local Authority)

5.1 Organisation and Leadership

"Ensure all organisations with statutory duties for road safety adopt common approaches towards achieving an agreed objective to reduce duplication and provide a stronger road safety message."
(Local Authority)

The Scottish Government has a major stake in ensuring the safety of all road users; so do local authorities and police forces, both of whom are fundamental to delivery at local level. Other organisations also play significant roles. It is important that the respective roles of Government and other bodies with a road safety interest complement each other.

To be effective in further reducing road deaths and serious injury there requires to be a co-ordinated effort from all partners. We believe that a strategic grouping can offer opportunities to drive the commitments in the Framework and to ensure joined-up working across Education, Engineering, Enforcement, Encouragement and Evaluation. This grouping would help to ensure that the Framework has high-level commitment and remains a priority for delivery bodies. Membership would be drawn from the key delivery organisations at a senior level. The Scottish Government would undertake to help produce an annual update from this grouping showing progress on the Framework commitments and Scottish road safety targets.

There is already excellent partnership working across Scotland, including working with the private sector. But it is important that we continue and build on this to further strengthen action on road safety.

Where lacking, we must establish effective links to local, area and functional partnerships. We are not proposing a reorganisation of road safety, but wherever possible, better interaction to ensure more effective lines of communication and responsibility across functions. We recognise that, within this process, there must remain the ability for local decision makers to decide how best to address local road safety issues.

Central Scotland Police, Diageo and Central FM Partnership In 2006, a partnership between Central Scotland Police, Diageo (global drinks company) and Central FM (local radio station) was formed due to the substantial increase in drink driving and accidents involving alcohol in the Central Scotland Police area. Both Diageo and Central FM are fully committed to the ethos of the campaign 'Clear Thinking, Responsible Drinking'. Subsequent campaigns consisted of greater high profile police enforcement, coupled with intense radio advertising paid for by Diageo. Central FM has a listening audience of 83,000 adults, equivalent to 39% of the adult population in the Forth Valley area, and produced infomercials, sound bites and promotional material to support the campaign. At the end of the campaign research established that the average listener had heard the messages 149 times. Results, to 31 July 2008, showed that drink driving was down 30% and accidents involving drink were down 55% compared to the same period in the previous year. The Automobile Association has recently joined the partnership and brought its considerable expertise and knowledge to the table. It has also given the campaign access to the 'Populous Panel' which allows it to gauge the views of local AA members. The success of the campaign has been acknowledged nationally and, in 2008, the Partnership was awarded a prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award.

To encourage networking, partnership working and to highlight the achievements in Scottish road safety, the Scottish Government will also explore the idea of supporting a Scottish Road Safety Week each year involving partners across Scotland. The Road Safety Week could help keep momentum high in delivery on this Framework and be used to celebrate examples of effective action. This, together with the recommendation on a new strategic grouping, is designed to strengthen leadership and improve awareness both across organisations and across Scotland, while retaining the essential local or regional nature of much activity.

A further example of what partnership working can achieve is shown by Northamptonshire.

Northamptonshire Casualty Reduction Partnership The partnership comprises five key partners: Northamptonshire County Council; Northamptonshire Police; Highways Agency; Local Health Authorities; and Fire and Rescue Service. By bringing together key agencies, taking ownership and sharing responsibility for all road safety issues, the partnership has been able to demonstrate dramatic and sustained casualty reductions in high risk areas. For example: Killed and seriously injured casualties have reduced year on year from 773 per annum (1994-98 average) to 462 in 2007. Road deaths have reduced from 76 in 1999, to 56 in 2007. Killed and seriously injured child casualties have reduced 54% from the baseline average 1994-98. Through road safety actions targeted at deprived areas, casualties have started to reduce. The partnership has received a variety of awards including the National Transport Award for Road Safety 2001, Institute of Highways and Transportation/ BP Road Safety Award 2002, Institute of Advanced Motorists Dominic Fox Award for Young Drivers and four Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards. The partnership operates its own website with comprehensive information on its activities as well as general information and advice on road safety. 8

5.2 Communication and Sharing Good Practice

"No one sector alone can as effectively produce results in improving safety as when sectors work together. It is therefore important that there are stronger links and good communications between all parties involved in this area of work." (Transport organisation)

Whilst Scottish road safety partners are already doing many things that work well, the public consultation also made it clear that delivery partners want evidence of what works before considering future investment in new initiatives.

To help with this, the Framework contains case studies of mainly Scottish road safety initiatives with a few from elsewhere in the UK and abroad. We also want to consider, for the future, ideas that, together with partners, we can trial or pilot in one area, evaluate and then share the results across Scotland to help spread best practice.

An existing vehicle for sharing good practice across the UK is the Road Safety Time Bank. Representatives from the scheme have been present at several road safety conferences in Scotland and some Scottish Road Safety Units have already signed up.

Road Safety Time Bank 9 The Road Safety Time Bank offers road safety professionals and practitioners across the UK the opportunity to share information and good practice. Organisations or individuals using the Time Bank are asked to commit time to help other Time Bank users based on the number of hours/days they have obtained from others. It works on the principle that everyone has something to learn and something to give. When a local authority joins the Road Safety Time Bank, it is given a homepage where it is able to promote its road safety practices, schemes and interventions. In building a homepage members have the opportunity to notify other members on areas of road safety where they are happy to offer help and assistance. Members are asked to write case studies about engineering schemes, education initiatives and enforcement strategies to support this. They are also encouraged to involve their road safety partners in order to bring about a complete approach to the system. When a member searches the Time Bank for a solution to a new road safety problem it will receive a list of local authorities that are able to offer support and a list of case studies to read. On reading these case studies it is hoped the member will find an approach, method or complete solution to the problem and can then contact the 'provider' and make a 'trade'. This 'trade' entails the member offering the solution giving their time for free to the member who needs the support. This time can either be over the phone, face to face or by simply sending through the necessary documentation. In return the 'provider' can then go to any other member and draw down from their support.

We want to explore with partners whether we can use existing data bases such as Time Bank or whether there is a need for a specific initiative in Scotland.

There are also initiatives sharing transportation practice, including road safety initiatives, across Europe. One of these - CONCEPT - was initiated by Aberdeenshire Council.

CONCEPT 10 The CONCEPT project identifies and shares best transportation practice between European regions. CONCEPT disseminates learning about new and effective solutions for developing transportation policies, strategies and projects as part of the INTERREG IIIC programme. The project idea was initiated by Aberdeenshire Council in early 2002 in response to the European Commission's Transport White Paper which had identified a number of issues that were required to be addressed for the sustainability and competitiveness of Europe's transportation system. Principal among these were the need to "place users at the heart of transport policy" and "shifting the balance between modes of transport" from road-based transport to rail, sea and inland waterways. CONCEPT was formed by partners who shared common aims and objectives. Its central focus is to help the European Commission by encouraging and facilitating the transfer of good practice (projects and policies that have positive impacts for a region's population, its economy and its environment) in sustainable transport. Partnership and co-operation between regions are seen as ideal means of communicating good practice, and also mechanisms by which a region can learn about how others have developed their transportation strategies.

5.3 Intelligence

"In the broadest sense, priorities should be statistically led to ensure maximum reduction of casualties."
(Police)

The intelligent use of statistical data by delivery partners is a key tool to understanding national and local issues and assessing how best to address these.

The gathering and reporting of Stats 19 road safety statistics is discussed in Chapter Four. It is a major source of data, providing valuable information on road accidents and the overall statistical evidence base is regularly assessed for quality. We are also keen to explore the use of other statistical evidence, such as hospital data, if it helps to give a clearer overall picture of road accidents in Scotland.

DfT is reviewing Stats 19, in consultation with delivery partners. The Scottish Government will be feeding into that review.

2008/09 Review Under National Statistics 11 procedures, the Stats 19 collection is subject to regular quality reviews, the last of which was carried out in 2004 (with subsequent recommendations implemented in January 2005). The review examines all aspects of the statistics collection: usability; suitability; quality; burden; processes and procedures. The current review will be carried out over the course of 2009. A public consultation was launched on the DfT website on 5th February 2009. The review is led by SCRAS with a smaller project review working group managing the specific aspects of the review, on which there are three representatives from Scotland (police, local and central government).

The current Stats 19 form now requires the police to gather home post codes for drivers, casualties and vehicle owners. We believe that this information should also be made available to those involved in the delivery of road safety education and publicity. Traditionally, road accidents have been logged by geographical location thereby allowing engineers to monitor developing trends and to carry out any appropriate remedial measures on the physical environment. However, in order to effectively deliver education, training and publicity activity within a local authority, Road Safety Officers need to be aware of the range of road incidents being experienced by resident road users regardless of where they occur in Scotland. The Scottish Government will develop a system, possibly working with DfT, which will analyse casualty data by post code and make it available to Scottish local authorities and police forces.

In some areas delivery partners in Scotland are already using local intelligence to inform road safety issues and solutions. Strathclyde Police employ both Intelligence and Crash Analysis teams and feed information on emerging trends to the 12 West of Scotland local authorities.

We want to continue to encourage and support this type of intelligence-led road safety both at local and national level and we will discuss with partners how best to do that.

Commitments

In Government, and in partnership with other stakeholders, we will:

• Investigate the establishment of a strategic Scottish group which is representative of the major road safety disciplines and key delivery partners.
• Introduce a Scottish Road Safety Week after consultation with partners.
• Produce an annual public update on the delivery of the Framework.
• Help to promote existing information sharing fora and databases and consider whether there is a need for a specific initiative for Scotland.
• Consider, with partners, local pilots of initiatives for evaluation and promulgation of results across Scotland.
• Explore the inclusion/effectiveness of wider statistical evidence other than that of Stats 19.
• Ensure Scottish views are included in DfT Stats 19 reviews.
• Work with local authorities and police forces in order to identify their needs in relation to expanding Road Casualties Scotland to include casualty analysis by home post code.
• Encourage and support the use of intelligence-led road safety targeting.