Road Safety Week is an annual event organised by the road safety charity Brake. There can't be many people in the UK who haven't been exposed to campaigns, adverts and messages promoting safety and safer driving, or warning of the consequences of careless or reckless behaviour behind the wheel; nevertheless, people are still killed or injured in road traffic accidents every day.
In August we promoted National Road Victim Month, organised by the RoadPeace charity and, at the beginning of October, we published a blog article on Animal Road Accident Awareness Day, organised by Catsmatter.org. The statistics in both articles were startling and, whichever at-risk group one is concerned with, the magnitude of the problem is clear.
The human cost
2023 is the last year for which official statistics have been published. Those figures showed that:
- Five people are killed on our roads every day and 80 are seriously injured.
- Someone is killed or seriously injured in a road accident every 17 minutes.
- 1,695 people were killed in accidents in 2023.
- 28,967 people were seriously injured in accidents in 2023.
There has been some decrease in the number of road casualties over time, but that drop seems very modest.
The decrease in the number of road deaths between 2022 and 2023 was 5%, but the decrease over the entire period 2014 - 2023 was only 8.6%, which seems disappointing. Of course, when considering the statistics, one has to bear in mind that the number of vehicles and vehicle journeys has grown enormously since 2014. According to government data:
- 35.6 million vehicles were licensed for use in the UK in 2014, and 41.2 million in 2023.
- The number of vehicle miles driven in 2014 was 311 billion, and in 2023 the total was 330.8 billion.
So, the number of vehicles and the number of miles driven in them both increased substantially. In that context, the percentage drops in deaths and injuries over that same period do seem a little more encouraging.
Driving change
One of the factors at play in reducing casualty figures is the improvement in levels of safety built into vehicles. Technology and regulation mean that today's cars are much safer than their predecessors. Airbags, improved headrest and seat belt designs, reinforced protective zones around occupants, SOS buttons and the like have meant that people in a brand new, 2024 car are more likely to survive and escape serious injury in an accident than the occupants of a 10 year-old car would be in a comparable accident.
Of course, better airbags, seat belts and reinforcement only help the people inside the vehicle. They do nothing to protect more vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists etc, who make up approximately half of road fatalities.
Other factors include the proliferation, and increasing efficacy, of speed and ANPR cameras; traffic calming measures such as speed restrictions and speed bumps etc and, of course, public awareness of the risks.
Getting the message out there
In the UK, it seems as if we have always had road safety messages, advertisements and campaigns. When your humble blogger was a child, the face of road safety for kids was a squirrel named Tufty. There was a Tufty Club, TV adverts, talks given in schools etc, all aimed at raising awareness of the hazards posed by roads and traffic. Later on, in the 1970s, we had the Green Cross Code and its hero Green Cross Man, played by the late Dave Prowse (subsequently of Darth Vader fame).
The Yin-yang concepts of road danger and road safety are familiar to us from childhood. Furthermore, regular television campaigns renew that familiarity periodically throughout our lives. Today we have online campaigns from charities such as Brake and RoadPeace, to supplement those messages delivered through other media.
In the course of preparing this article, it came as quite a surprise to look back and realise just how many campaigns have tried to limit the damage caused by traffic accidents.
Here are just a few of those campaigns (some descriptions reproduced from a longer list on the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) website).
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From 1953 - Child Road Safety
Tufty the Squirrel and The Tufty Club. TV and other media. Messages to children about safe behaviour near roads.
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June 1963 - Seat Belts
‘You Know It Makes Sense’. A TV advert showing car crashes with the narration ‘before any of us say “it can’t happen to me”, snap into that seat belt habit’.
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Sept 1970 - Seat Belts
‘Your seat belt is their security’. A series of TV adverts featuring Dennis Norden, suggesting that one reason for belting up is for your children.
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Jan 1971 - Seat Belts
TV adverts highlighted the dangers of being thrown through the windscreen in a collision. These advertisements prepared the ground for compulsory seat belt wearing in the front of the car.
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Nov 1977 - Drink Drive
‘Think before you drink before you drive’. A poster campaign using this slogan. It was later adopted by the Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association in their efforts to educate people about the dangers of drinking and driving.
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Jan 1983 - Seat Belts
‘The Blunders’. A fictional family was created for a series of TV commercials. The family members were all depicted as poor drivers, causing crashes in which other drivers and passengers were seriously injured as a result of not wearing their seat belts.
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Oct 1991 - Speed
‘Kill Your Speed. Not a Child’. The first speed advertisements showed ‘travelling’ road signs to illustrate the different survival rates of being hit at 20/30/40 mph.
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Dec 1992 - Drink Drive
A hard-hitting commercial, featuring an image of a fatally injured young woman, emphasised the deadly consequences of drinking and driving.
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Dec 1993 - Drink Drive
‘Drinking and Driving Wrecks Christmas’. A TV commercial showed the horrific consequences ‘a quick drink’ could have on a happy family Christmas dinner with images of a burning Christmas pud transformed into a burning car.
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April 1994 - Speed
‘Speed Kills. Kill Your Speed’. These advertisements showed the consequences of driving too fast. The adverts used two victims, who were shown as ‘ghosts’, accusing the drivers who killed them of driving too fast for the roads.
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May 1995 - Speed
‘Don’t Look Now’. A black and white TV advert portrayed a young girl on her way to school with a child’s voice-over telling drivers ‘You’re going to kill me….’ followed by the trivial excuses drivers use for speeding, such as being late for an appointment.
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July 1995 - Drink Drive
‘I’ve only had a couple… I thought I was all right to drive’. A TV commercial showed a young man who has crippled his friend in a drink drive crash.
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Dec 1995 - Drink Drive
‘Come on Dave, Just One More’. A TV commercial in which viewers hear Dave’s friends urging him to have one more drink in the pub. The visual shows a woman blending vegetables in her kitchen and pouring the unappetising puree into a bowl. The viewer then sees her feeding her son, Dave, who has brain damage, urging ‘Come on Dave, just one more’.
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June 1997 - Drink Drive
‘Have None for the Road’. This TV commercial focused on responsibility and reminded viewers of the thousands of people who are killed, crippled and maimed in drink drive crashes.
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Sept 1997 - Speed
‘So please let’s all slow down’, ‘Kill Your Speed’. A TV commercial showing footage of children subsequently killed by speeding motorists. A voice-over explained the procedures followed by the police when informing victims’ families.
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Jan 1998 - Seat Belts
‘Belt Up in the Back. For Everyone’s Sake’. The ‘Julie’ TV commercial showed a car crash in which the unbelted rear seat passenger is thrown forward into the driver (his mother) killing her.
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Dec 1998 - Drink Drive
‘Don’t Drink and DRIVE’. The campaign included TV and radio adverts, leaflets and posters. By colouring the ‘R’ and the ‘V’ in the word ‘drive’ differently, the message was ‘Don’t Drink and Die’.
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Dec 2000 - Drink Drive
‘THINK!’. The Christmas 2000 campaign included TV and radio advertising using Christmas songs contrasted with harrowing images of the emergency services dealing with the aftermath of a crash.
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June 2001 - Speed
‘THINK! Slow Down’. The THINK! branding was used to convey the dangers of speeding. The TV commercial showed in dramatic slow motion the extra distance travelled by a car braking from 35mph rather than 30mph, with a child being knocked over as a result. The campaign emphasised, with radio adverts and posters, the importance of stopping distances and how speeding dramatically increases them.
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April 2004 - Seat Belts
Following new research showing that many parents stopped using child car seats far too soon, this campaign urged parents to use child car seats or boosters for their children until they are at least 11 years old or 150cm tall (roughly 5 feet).
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Sept 2006 - Seat Belts / Child Car Seats
The THINK! Child Car Seat campaign highlighted major changes to the law about the requirement to ensure children used appropriate child restraints until they were old or tall enough to wear seat belts on their own.
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Oct 2007 - Speed
Rural Speed Campaign. The THINK! Rural Speed Campaign highlighted the hidden dangers of speeding on rural roads, warning drivers that they are three times more likely to be killed on a rural road than an urban one. Its key message was not to go faster than the conditions allow.
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Feb 2009 - Speed
In the television advert, a driver is haunted by images of the child he has killed - seeing his body in the bathroom mirror, through the window of a bus and when in the park with his son. The radio adverts - 'Always There' - featured a chilling message from 'beyond the grave'. Children's voices described what life is like for the driver who killed them while speeding several years ago. The drivers cannot sleep, watch a football match or spend time with their own children without thinking of the dead child.
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Dec 2013 - Drink Drive
‘Morning After’. The television campaign highlighted the message that although a driver may feel sober, their body could still be ‘over the limit’ the morning after drinking alcohol.
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July 2014 - Drink Drive
'THINK! A second drink can double your chance of a fatal collision.' A radio and poster campaign highlighting the economic, criminal and employment consequences of drink driving. The adverts include the voices of police officers, prosecutors and other professionals that an individual comes into contact with as a result of being caught drink driving.
Most of us remember some of the campaigns in the list, but despite the impact they may have had at the time, or the impact that more recent, and current, campaigns may have, the lessons are still not fully learned. The casualty figures show how much work is still to be done. If we had the space, we could also present the monetary costs of accidents in terms of insurance premiums, working days lost to injury. We could have included information on the consequences faced by the survivors of accidents and their families, and by the families of those who do not survive.
No matter how long the article, no matter how many facts and figures we present, basically, we would just be repeating what we all already know. We, as road users collectively, are not careful enough. Most accidents are caused by our mistakes and poor decisions.
As the much-used slogan says, before getting behind the wheel, we all need to THINK! Think about our speed, our seat belts, distractions (such as mobile phones), tiredness and all those other factors that we can influence.
More information about Road Safety Week
To find out more about Road Safety Week, or to sign up to take part in the campaign, visit https://www.brake.org.uk/road-safety-week.
