As is common nowadays, the Government’s Road Safety Strategy (RSS) has had elements in it “leaked” to The Times on August 10th , and as described in this article in the Guardian. Our Manifesto for what should be in a new RSS is here : below is a list of what has been leaked, what we think about these measures – and a surprising agreement between us and the motoring lobby!
(Go to Page 2 to continue reading)
Pages: 1 2
Road Danger Reduction Forum 
“A new requirement for an eye test for the over-70s every three years when they renew their driving licence, as well as a potential medical test for conditions”
is a self assessment and report responsibility of the licence holder.
Where is the validated data to show that vision drops of a cliff at 70 years of age to justify this point?
Is the can read a number plate roadside test reasonable and supported by the competent medical practitioners?
(it’s very different to the DVSA eye test performed by optometrists)
Eyesight should be good enough at any age.
“All of the above measures depend on drivers feeling that there is a realistic prospect of being caught for law breaking, which is simply not the case now.”
The decision by [Association of] Chief Police Officers to remove the world class Traffic Division was not only a shameful disregard for road traffic safety, but sent the message that it’s not important, a nice to have. The root cause of that political concensus is the incorrect choice of metrics for measuring road safety: killed or seriously injured. A well known management fallacy to only manage what is measured.
This arises from the road traffic policing responsibility to record KSI for road traffic incidents so generating the data. How would the road traffic police be aware without an incident that driving behaviour has fallen short of the minimum standards required to pass the DVSA test?
Is DVSA test pass minimum standard sufficient to address why Active Travel is seen as too risky by many people who would get life benefits by being more active?
Given the police approach to educate, inform, and enforce it’s an improvement that some Services will accept dashcam, ridercam video and evaluate that evidence against the DVSA test standard to inform, educate or enforce. However affordability is a problem with manual evaluation so AI is how to make it scalable to the increasing demand and in so doing avoid having to be everywhere. When AI doesn’t know, the human expert decides, so that’s how AI learns.
Further, as AI gets better at the DVSA test pass standard, it will be possible to go above the minimum to advanced level and to address the Active Travel blockers..
Obviously each Police Service and related Police Commissioner will have their own priorities according to the democratic architecture, however the development of such a reporting and evaluation platform with the ability to train AI to evaluate reports is a National requirement, So it should be developed by collaboration between the government departments responsible for transport, justice and innovation.