Transport Insights

As the BBC reports on the “relentless” toll of deaths on Essex’s roads in 2025, we wait to see what impact the latest game of musical chairs at the Department for Transport (DfT) may have on Labour’s long-promised road safety strategy.

BBC News, Essex reports that crashes have killed 48 people in the county since the turn of the year, almost matching the 50 total for 2024.

It’s the beginning of September so we are just over two-thirds of the way into the year.

Adam Pipe, head of roads policing at Essex Police, cited drug-driving, speed and carelessness as the biggest problems seen on the county’s highways.

“It is relentless,” Mr Pipe added.

Twenty-five of the 48 deaths on Essex’s roads in 2025 have been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider charging drivers.

“These are not, in most cases, an accident – there is a behaviour behind it,” Mr Pipe continued.

The BBC noted an earlier report that Essex Police is due to trial cameras that use artificial intelligence to spot drivers not wearing seatbelts and using their mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the DfT still doesn’t officially have a minister for roads, following the departure at the weekend of Lilian Greenwood, who was the future of roads once. At the moment, the new minister in the department, Keir Mather, doesn’t have a portfolio listed on the DfT website.

Last month, the government briefed the Times that the road safety strategy is “being developed by the transport secretary Heidi Alexander” and “expected to be published in the autumn”.

Obviously some media-friendly highlights were cherry picked from the strategy.

Will the careless loss of two DfT ministers now see the strategy delayed, or is it really down to Alexander?