This document, produced by the department of transport, health and education, the home scottish and welsh offices, and the treasury reviewed road safety policy in the united kingdom. Its aim was to look at measures already taken to decrease road casualties, and to recommend future action needed to reduce these by two thirds by the year 2000. Statistics of death and injury for different types of road user over the period 1965 to 1985 showed an overall decrease. Major constraints to further progress were found to be financial limits, restraint arising from international safety measure, social indifference, individual ignorance and limitations in knowledge of how to reduce accidents still further. The report recommended the following measures: a) the redirection of available resources towards measures which were demonstrationally cost effective; b) a 40% increase in research, particularly in the role of human behaviour in accidents and the means of influencing or constraining it; c) the implementation of a wide range of publicity and educational programmes; d) further improvements in highway and vehicle construction standards and design. The total cost of road accidents in 1985 was estimated as being £2820 million.
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