Forum topic: This week is Road Safety Week

To mark Road Safety Week the i newspaper today published some reports about the leniency with which dangerous driving is treated in UK courts. The quote below is from https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/uk/dozens-killer-drivers-walking-free-court-victims-demand-sentencing-overhaul]:

"Every day an average of five people are killed on Britain’s roads, all too often in sudden and traumatic circumstances which families liken to losing a loved one to violence.

"Last year the number of people dying on Britain’s roads rose for the first time in recent years. Provisional figures published by the Department for Transport reported 1,780 deaths – a rise of 49 on 2014."

Despite this, there has been a decline in the use and length of driving bans - surely the most obvious measure that should be taken. Not necessarily or only as a punishment, but as a means of improving road safety.

The article weighs the pros and cons of tougher sentencing and the difficulty of establishing driver culpability. There's a debate to had there, for sure, but one thing is clear to me: five deaths on the road per day (plus a much higher number of serious injuries) is an unacceptably high rate. Imagine the outcry if there were five deaths a month on the railways. Some will be the result of criminal recklessness, some will be the result of carelessness, some will be genuine "accidents". But all or nearly all could be avoided by lower speed limits and traffic calming measures (just consider the success of the Waltham Forest mini-Hollands www.standard.co.uk/news/london/mini-holland-scheme-in-walthamstow-hailed-as-major-success-as-traffic-falls-by-half-a3389936.html), but most of all there needs to be a change of mindset at government and local government level and, most importantly, in the minds of drivers. To quote from the same article:

"Mick Gradwell, a retired detective superintendent with Lancashire Police who investigated dozens of fatal crashes, said: “I don’t think people and society as a whole relates to road deaths as something they can be responsible for. Too many people wrongly think they are so good at driving, they can do all these other things and still drive safely.

“Anything that is a distraction means you are not fully concentrating on driving a tonne of metal and that’s when collisions happen. This mindset needs to change and people need to fully understand the potential repercussions of their actions on the roads.”

Centrally, everyday as I await to cross the road I, like most people see drivers carelessly jumping the red signal lights and not just in other areas but here in Palmers Green, and they do it because they know they can get away with it, they think its clever. People in authority know about it of course but choose to ignore this irresponsible and dangerous behaviour by drivers, and one has to wonder if they are ignoring it because they are in the habit of doing it themselves.

Yes, I had complained in the past and suggested more CCTV Cameras where there are traffic signal lights and fines to be imposed as a deterrent to all drivers, in the hope that a stop will be put to this dangerous driving trend, but there was no reply, that is because ultimately they are not interested in redressing the problem, they just do not care and that is why drivers will continue to carelessly jump the red lights.