A bad day for safety on the roads

       PRESS RELEASE   Wednesday May 11th 2011

“Nationally and internationally, this is a bad day for safety on the roads”.

Subject: UN “Decade of Action for Road Safety” and Department for Transport “Strategic Framework for Road Safety”.

This dark day for a civilised approach to danger on the roads will be symbolised by the UK Prime Minister David Cameron welcoming Formula One racing drivers to 10 Downing Street. Both the UN and UK “strategies” are based on misleading measures of safety on the road and conniving with careless and dangerous driving.

Globally, we support our colleagues in RoadPeace saying that: “reducing road danger, through the reduction in speed, volume and dominance of motorised vehicles, is essential not only to reduce road deaths but also to tackle the twin crises of climate change and obesity”.

Nationally, a civilised approach to safety on the road requires reducing danger at source from careless and dangerous driving, with proper accountability from those responsible for it. But this has once again been opposed by the Department for Transport’s downgrading of the importance of careless driving by reducing likely penalties and ineffective “education” for bad drivers.

Note to Editors:

The Road Danger Reduction Forum is a transport professionals-based organisation with support from cycling, pedestrian, road crash victims and sustainable transport organisations in the UK. Go to www.rdrf.org.uk

Above is our Press Release. We will be spending some time saying what is so wrong with these two strategies, meanwhile let’s get one of the perpetrators of the global strategy to show his true colours: 

Lord Robertson – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01114ks/Today_11_05_2011/  Listen at 2:41:50. This excerpt was aired at the RoadPeace conference at London School of Hygiene and Medicine on May11th to gales of laughter.