ON Tuesday I had sponsored a Parliamentary Reception for the road safety charity ‘BRAKE’.
As you would expect with such an important cause, the reception was very well attended and a number of important issues were raised about how to improve road safety throughout the UK, particularly amongst young drivers. I have written previously about this issue but, sadly, it is an issue that continues to arise, especially in rural areas such as ours.
2011 marks the beginning of the UN Decade for Road Safety and BRAKE have teamed up with the Association of British Insurers and Co-Operative Insurance to embrace this campaign and launch a joint campaign to tackle the issue of road safety. Foremost amongst their aims is to ensure that the UK Government introduce a Graduated Driver Licence.
For a number of years I have worked with Dr Sarah Jones, a registrar dealing specifically with Public Health and previously based at Cardiff University. She has been tireless in raising these issues and particularly in terms of the potential that a Graduated Driver Licence (GDL) could play in improving the skills of new drivers and thereby reduce the number of injuries and deaths on our roads. We previously attended a meeting at the Department for Transport with the Minister responsible in order to raise these issues in person and had a very positive meeting.
While young drivers may have enough experience to pass a driving test they do not necessarily have the experience to deal with the situations that occur when out driving, particularly on rural roads. In many countries across the world it has been recognised that this is a problem and GDLs introduced.
These have proved particularly successful in New Zealand, Australia, USA, Canada and many European countries in bringing down the number of fatalities amongst young drivers. Not only has it had a positive impact in relation to youth driving fatalities and injuries but there is also an economic benefit associated with reducing the number of accidents.
Every year we see young people lose their lives or permanently injured in Wales. I believe we can do more to prevent these tragedies by improving training for young and newly qualified drivers.
Although for most age groups road traffic accident figures are improving, the numbers of accidents involving young drivers have increased over recent years resulting in the deaths of too many young people.
Figures for 2008 show that there were 52 deaths and 378 serious injuries of people between 16 and 25 in Wales, accounting for 37% of all death and serious accidents on the roads.
Office for National Statistics figures for 2010 show:
* Young people age 15-24 are more likely to die in a preventable road crash than from any other cause.
* While young drivers aged 17-24 account for one in eight licence holders, they are involved in one in four road deaths and serious injuries.
* 20% of all 17-year-old drivers have a crash in their first year after passing their test
* Every year, more than 3,300 young drivers and passengers aged 17-24 are killed or suffer a life-changing serious injury in a road crash, taking many more innocent road users of all ages with them.
On Wednesday morning, Lord Robertson estimated on BBC Radio 4 that twice as many people will die on the world's roads by 2100 than died in all the conflicts of the 20th century.
These figures are not designed to scare, but to highlight one simple thing: that we can make an incredible difference to these statistics by changing the way that people learn to drive.
The work undertaken by Dr Jones suggests that the introduction would lead to a reduction in the number of people killed on British roads, particularly young people and that the introduction of a scheme could result in an estimated 15 less deaths, 1,000 fewer casualties and a saving to the economy of £56m each year in Wales alone.
Another development that arose at the reception was that the Co-Operative have recently introduced a scheme to introduce tracking devices into the cars of young drivers in exchange for reduced insurance premiums.
The device would be able to register the speed that drivers are travelling at, particularly around corners, and good drivers would be rewarded financially for putting safety first.
Further information on BRAKE’s campaign can be found by visiting their website: http://www.brake.org.uk/gdl2011campaignsummary and more detailed research on GDL can be found here: http://www.brake.org.uk/gdl2011researchbasis