Lawford Kidd's Blog

Many employers with vehicle fleets are not taking advantage of new technologies to protect vulnerable road users, a new report by Brake, the road safety charity, and Licence Bureau has found.

Despite the potential to help drivers see pedestrians and cyclists and reduce casualties, only one in five HGV operators surveyed (20%) have rear-facing cameras on all vehicles, one in 12 (8%) have side-facing cameras on all vehicles, and one in eight (12%) have side sensors on all vehicles.

The report found HGV safety technologies that are mandatory under European law, such as underrun protection and wide-angle lenses, are present on almost all vehicles. Therefore, Brake is calling for more comprehensive regulation to ensure the widespread take up of technologies such as automatically moving mirrors, side-view cameras and side sensors, which can be of benefit in preventing needless death and injuries yet are currently only present on a minority of vehicle fleets.

Companies are being urged to step up their commitment to safer business driving on UK roads, by recommending organisations they employ or hire carry the ISO 39001 accreditation, which shows their drivers have met some of the highest safety standards.

The call comes from the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), which recently conducted a survey revealing that 72% of people who drove for business reasons had been offered no training by their employer at all – even though 44% of them said they would welcome the opportunity.

The figures relating to driving for work accidents are alarming:

Traffic education should become an integral part of the National Curriculum, in an effort to cut the numbers of young people killed and injured on UK roads, the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has said.

The call ties in with a survey by the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile), which found that only seven of 15 European countries had mandatory traffic education in schools.

Although the numbers of people killed and injured on UK roads have been steadily decreasing for many years, the rate of decrease has been slowing down recently.

Drunk pedestrians can be a major cause of traffic accidents, according to new research by price comparison website Confused.com.

The research shows that over 6,000 ‘drunk’ pedestrians have been injured on UK roads since 20111, and many of these ‘drunk walking’ accidents are happening over the Christmas period.

Drunk pedestrians are most at risk of injury on UK roads between the times of 22:00-23:59, perhaps as a result of a long night of drinking. Men are apparently the most likely to drink-walk, and account for more than three quarters (79%) of all drunk pedestrian road incidents.

Roads in Scotland are becoming safer, according to recently released statistics from Transport Scotland.

The statistics cover reported road accidents where one or more people were killed or injured in 2013. Although the figured are only provisional (final figures are due to be published later in the year), the majority of the findings are encouraging for Scottish road users.

Having falling by 10% to 11,493 between 2012 and 2013, the number of road casualties are now at their lowest recovered level. Of these 11,493 reported road casualties, the number of fatalities dropped by 3% from 178 to 172, serious injuries by 16% to 1,667 and minor injures by 9% to 9,654.