Transport Insights

It’s very hard to know what to say about the forthcoming national road safety strategy, bits of which have been fed to the media, except that a few headline-grabbing measures are not, so far, a strategy.

It is the nature of the way government works these days that big policy documents, labelled strategies, often feature a few crowd-pleasing changes. It doesn’t mean they don’t qualify as strategies, but what matters is how coherently the whole approach fits together.

The motoring and road safety groups that have commented on what we have so far clearly feel the political need to be supportive of measures that are likely to make a small difference.

But what is missing so far is anything, such as lower speed limits, that could make a real difference at the cost of alienating some in the right wing media and some voters.

Many motoring and road safety organisations, and bereaved parents, would also like to see graduated licensing for young drivers but Labour clearly feels that its responsibility to reduce casualties doesn’t extend to areas where it could lose votes.