In 2013, 1,713 people were killed on Britain’s roads and 21,657 were seriously injured. There are now 10 times more people killed on our roads each year than in the workplace. Until recently, death and injury on the road had been regarded as inevitable. The techniques and disciplines of managing fatal risk in manufacturing, oil exploration and mining, which have been so successful, have not been seen as relevant to the roads. Today road managers face prosecution if they do not protect their own road workers from small risks while their responsibility to protect road users from known high risks is vague and belongs to another era. By contrast companies have to operate on the basis that any death related to their products and services is unacceptable. In the 1990s, the Swedish and Dutch governments asked fundamental questions about what it would take to move the risk of road death towards zero. In Britain, the newly created government corporation, Highways England, is today also assuming a leadership role in challenging why in the future anyone should come to serious harm on its network. The core principle of the resulting initiative “Vision Zero” is that the ‘safe system’ should not fail in any situation in which a person might make a mistake. The Road Safety Foundation welcomed the government’s recognition in 2014 of the worldwide contribution that the Star Rating of roads and vehicles had made to simplifying effective road safety policy. The new government corporation for national roads, Highways England, subsequently published a goal that 90% of travel on its network will be at 3-star or above by 2020. Leading countries using EuroRAP are managing major road networks so that travel at 3-star minimum becomes the norm. The Netherlands is now within 25kms of achieving 3-star on national roads. Sweden’s administration aims for better than 75% by 2020 and near 100% by 2025. A 4-star goal for roads carrying more than 50,000 vehicles is emerging as is 4-star protection for vulnerable road users in built-up areas. This report uses the international benchmark to see the extent to which the ‘most improved’ achieved the minimum 3-star standard and the steps needed for the ‘persistently higher risk road’ to achieve the same target. Since 2002, the Road Safety Foundation has published the British EuroRAP Risk Mapping and Performance Tracking results for British motorways and ‘A’ roads. The survey is broken down into over 2,500 sections. The Risk Mapping protocol uses crash data to determine the rate of death and serious injury per vehicle kilometres travelled for each road and converts the rates calculated into fie coloured categories to visualise the level of risk. The Performance Tracking protocol compares the maps over time to see which routes have improved and which remain high risk. The ‘safe system’ (described on page 6) develops how safer behaviour, safer vehicles and safer vehicles can work together to reduce serious road trauma. The ‘most improved’ roads are an example of the safe system working together. It is not possible to identify which of the elements within each was most responsible for the overall improvement. Similarly, an insurance company cannot predict which individual in which car on which road will crash next year. It must evaluate known risks. The ‘Star Rating’ method applied seeks to address known high risks which are built-in to a road and how, on average, these can be reduced. As serious road crashes become less frequent, best British practice recommends ‘proactive’ reduction of known high risks rather than wait for deaths to occur. This begins to bring roads in line with all other industries, products and services. It ensures road authorities can manage the risks under their direct control rather than rely on vehicle improvements or other initiatives (eg adoption of telematics insurance by young drivers) as a way of measuring their own progress. This report shows that for roads to achieve the ‘most improved’ label requires the implementation of measures on the road which raise ‘Star Ratings’. These may stretch from major engineering schemes to ‘smart’ maintenance. This report uses the Star Rating protocol, conceived by EuroRAP and developed by the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), to measure the in-built safety of the roads featured in the 2014 British EuroRAP results. The report focuses on two case studies to illustrate application of Star Rating and uses data comparing performance in 2007-09 with 2010-12: a) The A404 in Buckinghamshire — Britain’s most improved road b) The A285 in West Sussex — Britain’s persistently highest risk road Road authorities for both case studies were consulted during the reporting process. (Author/publisher)
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