Survey reveals attitudes to ‘THINK!’ and road safety

Drink driving, use of mobile phones without a hands-free kit, speeding, drug driving and careless driving are perceived as the most important issues for the Government to address to improve road safety, according to the recent THINK! Annual Survey.

The survey measures road safety attitudes and behaviour among the British population. A total of 2,007 interviews were conducted in Great Britain by TNS-BMRB, with those aged 16+.

The survey covers:

• Awareness of, attitudes towards, and perceptions of the THINK! road safety brand;

• Attitudes towards road safety and its perceived importance in relation to other social issues;

• Attitudes towards driving, and influences on driving behaviour;

• Driving and road safety behaviour among different users, including the prevalence of dangerous driving behaviour.

61% of respondents agreed that traffic calming measures make roads safer; 29% agreed that roads are safer than they were five years ago; and 28% agreed that there are now more police officers on the roads than before. ‘Road rage’ is identified as the least important road safety issue for the Government to address.

The influences likely to encourage people to drive safely remain the same as 12 months ago, namely: ‘visible police presence’, ‘speed cameras’, ‘threat of prosecution’ and ‘family’.

In terms of which transport is considered safest, walking and trains came out top, with bicycles and motorcycles considered the least safe of all modes of transport

Training esssential to increase cycle journeys to school.

The Department for Transport  has  published a report looking at the number of children cycling to school since the introduction of the Bikeability scheme five years ago. In March the scheme celebrated five years of delivering training for children in schools.

This report shows that where there is a longer history of delivering cycle training, a higher proportion of children are cycling to secondary school.

Further, those authorities that have received higher levels of Bikeability funding have seen larger increases in cycling to secondary school.

Full details of the research can be viewed at -

www.dft.gov.uk/bikeability/wp-content/uploads/120320_Cycling_to_School_Bikeability_Data_Report_v_final.pdf

One in five construction sites fail safety checks.

According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) nearly one in five construction sites failed safety checks during a national initiative to improve construction site safety – a slight improvement on previous years.

Inspectors from the HSE visited a total 3237 sites and saw 4080 contractors, but 581 sites were found to have practices that put workers at risk with a total of 870 enforcement notices issued and in 603 instances work had to stop immediately.

Philip White, Chief Inspector of Construction, said:

“It is encouraging that inspectors found a slight improvement in standards and small construction firms are taking safety seriously when carrying out refurbishment work.

“But this is just a snapshot, and the number of notices served for unsafe work at height is still unacceptable, particularly when the safety measures are well-known and straightforward to implement.

“Too many contractors continue to put their own or other people’s lives at risk and we will not hesitate to take action where standards are not met.”

Inspectors targeted sites where refurbishment or repair work was being carried out as part of an annual, month-long drive across Britain with the aim of reducing the risk of death, injury and ill health.

The focus was on high-risk activity including working at height and ensuring sites were in ‘good order’, being clean and tidy with clear access routes.

Falls from height remain one of the most common causes of deaths and major injury and responsible for the largest proportion of enforcement notices 49%, but shows a slight improvement on previous years of 55% in 2010.

Casualties reduction stalls acrossthe EU.

 EU road deaths for 2011 are a major cause for concern. The good news is that road deaths are still falling. There are countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Hungary and Greece where very serious efforts have delivered positive results.

The bad news is that road deaths are falling more slowly. They were down only 2%last year. Normally it is about 6% and we have not seen this kind of pronounced ‘slow down’ before. Worse still, there are some large EU Member States, which normally have very good road safety records, where the trend is up!

Other Member States, who were already lagging behind in road safety, also showed increases last year.  

Motorbikes remain a problem. EU road deaths have fallen over the last ten years, but not for motorbikes. There, the number of deaths remains the same.  

In the meantime, these figures are a “wake up” call. – 85 people still die on Europe’s roads every day. 

The cost of head injuries revealed.

The Child Accident Prevention Trust has reported that head injuries are the most common severe injuries for children. Even a mild head injury can have lasting effects and more severe injuries cause permanent damage to the brain which can drastically change the lives of the injured child and their family.  

 The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE ) defines a head injury as any trauma to the head other than shallow injuries on the surface of the face.

A severe head trauma can cause injuries to the brain, which is known as traumatic brain injury. The range of severity in head injuries is very broad, from a concussion with no lasting damage, to long-term cognitive and behavioural problems, permanent disability, persistent vegetative states, or fatality.

The scale of the problem

• Around 295,000 under-16s attend A&E with head injuries each year in England. Most head injuries are minor but 1 in 10 is moderate to severe.
•  In England during 2010/11, around 36,500 children under 14 were admitted to hospital with head injuries.
• Traumatic brain injury accounts for 30% of childhood deaths due to external causes of injury in 1-14 year olds. Children living in deprived areas are more likely to sustain severe traumatic brain injury.
• Falls and road-traffic accidents are the most common causes of injury, with falls most predominant in the under-2s.

Table 1: Key costs for treating head injuries in children and young people

Item	Cost
Cost Annual cost of hospital admissions in under-14s	£115 million
Annual cost of CT scans of the head in under-16s	£5.87 million
Cost of a bed in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU)	£2,327
Average stay of 3 days in PICU	£6,981
100 days of specialist inpatient rehabilitation for a traumatic brain injury	£43,100
Approximate lifetime medical, educational and social costs for one child with a severe traumatic brain injury	£4.89 million

White lines not up to the mark!

The UK’s road markings are vanishing at an alarming rate, with well over half of white lines in Scotland and Wales almost non-existent, and England’s road markings faring little better.

A snapshot survey of nearly 500 miles shows that, on average, 50.6 percent of theUK’s road markings surveyed are barely visible. The proportion of roads falling into the “emergency repairs” bracket stands at 23 per cent; while less than 7 per cent of road markings score the highest rating.

By contrast, a survey carried out 12 months earlier on theUK’s 10 most dangerous roads showed that 23 percent of centre lines fell into the lowest category while 31 percent qualified for the highest rating.

 The Road Safety Markings Association (RSMA) carried out the latest spot-check across a range of motorways and major A roads managed by the Highways Agency, and lesser A and B roads managed by local authorities. 

 RSMA national director George Lee says: “These findings are shocking.  We could see a clear, direct correlation between deadly roads and deadly road markings when we examined the 10 most dangerous roads identified by the Road Safety Foundation.

“Now, just a simple cross-section of roads – arguably representative of the entire network – shows a level of deterioration that defies belief.

 “We recognise that the UK is currently under huge financial pressure, but road markings are widely recognised to provide the best, most simple navigation aid to drivers, and to be the most cost-effective road safety measure and it is time we gave drivers the vital clues they need to use our roads.”

Three Primary Colours

 

Three Primary Colors is a collaboration between OK Go and Sesame Street explaining the basics of color theory in stop-motion. Made me smile.

MF, studio, dbda

Calls for action on accidents at work

According to The Herald experts have raised concerns about a lack of justice over health and safety failures, as it emerged only 3% of complaints ever lead to a prosecution or enforcement notice in Scotland and one in three deaths at work is not scrutinised by a fatal accident inquiry.

Calls have been made for a shake-up of how health and safety accidents at work are investigated after it was revealed the number of cases recommended for prosecution has fallen by nearly 50% in two years.

New data produced by the major personal injury specialists, Thompsons Solicitors Scotland, has revealed that despite a fatal accident inquiry(FAI) for a death at work being mandatory by law, in 29% of cases no such investigation is carried out.

The firm says of the cases that do result in an FAI, they take an average of 30 months to set up. In one-third of instances, it took three to four years for an FAI to be held. None took under a year.

Thompsons say Scotland should follow the lead of English coroner’s courts, which set up an inquest immediately following a death.

Official figures show the number of cases the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recommended for prosecution in Scotland fell from 84 in 2008-09 to 43 in 2009-10 and 44 in 2010-11, when responsibility passed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Of 1229 complaints made to the HSE in Scotland in 2009-10 just 2.9% resulted in a prosecution or enforcement action. In England and Wales the figure is 4.3% of complaints.

Around one in five of the 43 Scottish cases passed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service after being recommended for prosecution by the HSE did not result in charges being pursued, according to a new report to Westminster. There was also a reduction in the percentage of reported major-injury incidents being investigated, down from 11% of cases in 2007-08 to 6% in 2009-10.

Thompsons’ data shows that of its fatal workplace accident and disease cases, 24% resulted in criminal charges, 44% led to no charges while 24% of investigations were ongoing.

Fatal Festive Season

To put into perspective the road safety problem worldwide, recently published casualty figures for South Africa since the beginning of this year’s festive season on December 1, indicate that there has been 710 reported fatalities on the countries roads according to the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC). Here in the UK over the same period there will be around 150 road deaths.

Factors that contributed to the crashes were high speed, dangerous driving, fatigue among long distance minibus drivers, overloading and tyre failure.

Between December 12 and 18, more than 1000 motorists were arrested for transgressions including drunken driving, excessive speed, overloading and reckless or negligent driving.

These figures highlight the need for increased vigilance at all times and also the importance of the Global Decade of Action for Road Safety launched earlier this year.

Portugal, Latvia and Spain lead the pack.

Young people are among the groups facing the highest risks of dying while on the road: 140,000 young people aged 15 to 30 have lost their lives on European roads since 2001; 9150 of them in 2010.

This age group represents 20% of the population of the EU, but makes up 30% of the total number of road deaths. Mortality of young people – number of deaths divided by population – is 69% higher than the corresponding figure for people of all other ages.

The latest Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) Flash also reveals that young males are a particularly problematic group, making up 81% of the number of young people killed on EU roads.

Portugal, Latvia and Spain lead the pack in reducing the number of young people road deaths and they are followed by Estonia, Slovenia and Luxembourg

Good progress was also made in Sweden, The Netherlands and Switzerland, who have become the safest countries in terms of young people killed per young inhabitants  Young people in these countries benefitted not only from measures specific to young people but also from general road safety measures, enforcement efforts and improvements in infrastructure.