2 Road Safety Planning
2.1 What is road safety planning?
It is clear that no two areas in Scotland plan their road safety activities in exactly the same way, but those areas successfully reducing the number of road accident casualties approach road safety planning in broadly the same manner.
Effective road safety planning is approached through a process of developing and implementing a road safety strategy using a programme of initiatives or projects, taking into account strategy objectives and resources available. It should be regarded as having two levels: strategic planning (programme development), and specific individual projects.
2.2 Influence of national strategy and targets in developing local strategies
In March 2000, the UK Government, Scottish Executive and National Assembly for Wales announced a national road safety strategy "Tomorrow's roads - safer for everyone", including road accident reduction casualty targets for 2010.
The targets were introduced to achieve further substantial improvements in road safety, with particular emphasis on child casualties. The targets are based on the average casualty levels over the period 1994-1998.The targets are:
- a 40% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents
- a 50% reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured
- a 10% reduction in the slight casualty rate, expressed as the number of people slightly injured per 100 million vehicle kilometres
The national road safety strategy sets out how local authorities should plan to reduce the number and severity of road traffic casualties in their area by examining where accidents and accident casualties are concentrated. It recommends that this be set out in Local Transport Strategies ( LTS).
Whilst there is no stipulation in the national strategy that local authorities should produce a Road Safety Plan as a separate document from the LTS, many local authorities have chosen to do so. Developing a separate Road Safety Plan helps to dissociate road safety from being regarded exclusively as a road engineering issue. Improving road safety and reducing casualty numbers demands an inter-agency approach that includes road engineers, RSOs, police officers, education and health departments and others. Many good examples of Road Safety Plans have been developed through an inter-agency approach.
Road Safety Plans should include an assessment of the road accident numbers and severity within the area in order to identify the key road safety issues to be tackled. The strategy set out in the Road Safety Plan should be developed with regard to these issues and to the national transport strategy. The strategy must be developed with the available resources in mind to ensure that it can be implemented on the ground.
Road Safety Plans should include measurable targets against which a programme of initiatives to improve road safety can be evaluated. In many cases, local authority Road Safety Plans include the Government targets for 2010 and in some cases, where the Government targets have already been met, higher targets have been set.
Figure 1 broadly illustrates the relationship between Government targets and strategy and local strategy and implementation.
Figure 1: The road safety strategy development and implementation cycle
The development of a Road Safety Plan is the process of linking policy and strategy with action on the ground. Key decisions need to be made about what is and what is not actioned - these decisions will be made in the light of local problems, likely outcomes and resources available. The implementation of the Road Safety Plan needs to be monitored at a strategic level to ensure that the strategy is as effective and efficient as it can be. Evaluation is a key element providing feedback to programme developers. This is a continuing process to ensure the programme is refreshed in light of this feedback. This process may be summarised as a continuous cycle of planning, implementing and monitoring, and evaluating (say what you do, do what you say, and prove that you do it).
The implementation of a strategy will involve the development and implementation of a set of individual initiatives or projects. These projects may be free-standing or overlap with others. Each project will require detailed planning with its own implementation programme. There will be a need to monitor and evaluate progress to ensure that targets and best value considerations are achieved within the project and also to inform the wider road safety planning process.
Road Safety Plan development and the implementation of individual initiatives follow the same model project cycle as illustrated by Figure 2.
Figure 2: The model project cycle