Improving Road safety.In the workplace over the last 30 years, great strides have taken place in terms of accident reduction, this has been spurred on by a plethora of legislation which has clearly set out the responsibilities of the employer and the employees in preventing accidents. The underlying presumption in all the latest regulations is that accidents do not just happen, unsafe actions or unsafe systems cause them. Each and every serious accident is reportable to the HSE who will investigate. The root causes of accidents are clearly identified and the onus is then placed on the employers to address every safety hazard that is identified. So how does this relate to road safety? There are many distractions now facing the drivers of modern vehicles, these include mobile phones, Sat. Nav. systems, and in car entertainment systems. All these are competing with the road signs and signals for the driver’s full attention. The last year has seen a number of drivers convicted and jailed for causing “death by dangerous driving”, as they have driven the wrong way down motorways or dual carriageways. Their only defence has been that they had made an honest mistake. The question is, will jailing these people stop more innocent lives being lost in future. The answer has got to be 'no'. These incidents will continue to happen until something 'new' is done to stop these errors being made. One thing that was made clear at the court cases was that the warning road signs that these individuals had missed were installed to the current regulations. The crucial difference in the response to these fatal incidents is that unlike workplace accidents, absolutely no effort is being put into resolving the problems to stop re-occurrence. The current road signs and regulations have altered very little in years. The road signs deployed are enshrined in an International treaty some 40 years old. During that period there have been some great advances in computer technology, sensor technology and lighting technology. The 'root cause' behind the fatal accidents caused by these drivers was that 'vital road signs had been missed'. It could be argued that the current warning signs are not 'fit for purpose' in that they failed to fulfil the task for which they were intended. If the safety of our road network is to be improved it is vital that the warning signs used, in spite of distractions, cannot be simply overlooked. It only takes one in a million drivers to miss them and there are dire consequences, innocent lives are lost. It is time now that the old rule books are thrown out and instead we deploy the modern technology that is available to prevent the repeat of similar accidents. It is therefore from this background that I am proposing new solutions for updating signs and signaling on our roads. Road safety can only be improved if lessons are learned from accidents and changes are made. To be able to improve the network and respond to the outcome of accident investigations, the traffic engineers need to have the right tools for the job. There are currently glaring gaps in the signs and signals available to deal with safety issues, no warnings for 'wrong way' or 'oncoming traffic hazard at traffic lights' currently exist. The problem, as one road design engineer told me, is that the introduction of any new idea, even if it is a good one, can take years to get through the red tape. If there are no obvious down sides to a new safety solution, there should be a fast track to get changes implemented in order to resolve issues within a reasonable time-scale. The new Safety Flowsignals signals proposed in this presentation could be just the start for the deployment of a number of technology led solutions across the road network. The costs for the production of high specification electronic systems have never been cheaper. The traffic light safety solution proposed would have a very low payback period, measured in months, rather than years. With the spiraling costs of insurance repair work, in preventing just one accident, the installation costs of the signals would be covered. With the support of pilot scheme statistics, an approach could be made to the vehicle insurers for sponsorship of the safety improvements, as they would be one of the prime beneficiaries from the new installations.
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