1. Move UK away from dependence on private motor transport, which is unsustainable, wasteful, unsafe and is a deterrent to walking and cycling, by incentivising sustainable, active travel and public transport and by deterring unnecessary motor vehicle use by road pricing.
2. Cut the road building budget (c. £7 billion*) and reallocate for sustainable transport including:
£2 billion p.a. for Active Travel routes to deliver target of 50% of urban trips on foot or by bicycle by 2030.
3. Enforce road traffic law effectively through a substantial increase in roads policing, including national support for 3rd party reporting, with emphasis on minor penalties for common offences implicated in causing death and injury to others. Allocate an additional £500 million p.a. to be spent on road traffic policing.
4. Implement a National Road Safety Strategy with headline targets to reduce the danger that road users can pose to others, the establishment of a Road Safety Investigation Branch and lower speed limits with default of 20mph on urban roads and 40mph max on country lanes.
5. Legislate for and incentivise use of smaller, slower, safer, sustainable motor vehicles for passengers and freight. Taxation should be based on vehicle size, weight, and fuel with an objective being the reduction of use of SUVs in urban areas.
6. Commission a review of all road traffic laws to secure “road justice”.
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Road Danger Reduction Forum President Baroness Jenny Jones said:
“Victims of road crashes – whether those injured or those who have lost loved ones – suffer appallingly, not least with an often overly lenient attitude in the justice system. The only civilised approach to this is to reduce danger at source – from those with the potential to hurt or kill others”, says Baroness Jones.
“Measures to curb road danger have to be part of a transport policy – unlike the one we have had for decades – which is less car dependent, and which supports active and less polluting forms of transport: this can also cut the deaths from inactive lives and vehicle emissions, as well as those from road crashes.”
It’s not right to expect children to wear body armour and high visibility clothing to (supposedly) protect themselves, while adults with a ton of metal around them are permitted to get away with dangerous and unnecessary driving which scares them off the streets.”
For further information, or if you want your organisation to sign up to the Manifesto, contact:
Dr Robert Davis, Chair RDRF, at chairrdrf@aol.com
We’ll be commenting further here and on @CHAIRRDRF about other Manifestos, why ours is different and what we have in common. 19th June 2024
- *The 2nd Roads Investment Strategy (RIS2) was £27.4bn when it was first announced in March 2020 (and that was to cover the 5 years from April 2020 to March 2025)to £24bn in the October 2021 Spending Review. About £14.1bn of it was for actually building new road capacity. The roads budget for beyond March 2025 (i.e. RIS3) has yet to be set – we believe that there should be a presumption against creating new capacity which will induce or generate more motor vehicular traffic.
Road Danger Reduction Forum 