Research carried out for the Scottish Executive highlighted the higher incidence rate of child road accidents in deprived or disadvantaged areas of Scotland1. This finding was mirrored in research carried out for Lothian Regional Council that demonstrated a clear link between involvement in accidents as a casualty and indexes of social deprivation. Table 1.1 shows per capita casualty rates for Lothian Region (1990-94) which indicate that children aged between 10 and 17 living in more deprived areas are three times more likely to be injured in a road accident than people living in affluent areas. These data which are aggregated to deprivation category (depcat) mask an eight-fold difference between the most deprived and most affluent areas defined by postcode sector.The improvement of road safety can play an integral role in achieving many of the social inclusion, accessibility and community safety objectives set out for the regeneration of Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities. Each of the 34 area based Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs) in Scotland are striving to meet an array of objectives that together will improve the quality of life of the communities that live within them. There are examples of significant road safety activity in SIP areas with many examples of good practice with strong local community involvement. These examples present an inter-agency approach to tackling road safety, recognising that it is a multi-faceted issue, of importance to a broad spectrum of agencies and individuals. There is also evidence that many authorities require to adopt a more formal strategy to target improvements to road safety in regeneration areas. Many areas continue to base road safety promotion on national programmes, often overlooking the opportunity to develop promotions and projects based on the needs of the local community and agencies. The different agencies and key stakeholders engaged in community regeneration within Scotland currently do not have guidance available to them on how best to interact to promote road safety. Consequently there is potential for community regeneration schemes to be developed and implemented without road safety being properly considered. Excellence in road safety practice and public realm design is indivisible. A project which fails to recognise good road safety is a failed project. It was therefore decided that a set of guidelines should be produced for use by all the agencies and stakeholders engaged in community regeneration that give guidance on how best to approach road safety in regeneration areas using an inter-agency, community based approach. The guidelines promote the need to tackle road safety issues in regeneration areas within the wider context of community safety. They recognise road safety as a component of community safety. (Author/publisher)
Abstract