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so political will, education and enforcement had a significant effect?
but but but but infrastructure and Holland
dancing james-
so political will, education and enforcement had a significant effect?
It's pretty cool, yes. And when people could see their self interest it's also hardly surprising. What the WHO can't say with any certainty is whether the political will created the need for change, or whether the people had the need, i.e. self interest, and the politicians enabled the change, or both. As Hefty says, things were pretty bad, and the upsides pretty obvious for everyone. They weren't asking people who drive to be nice to people who cycle or take more care around vulnerable road users, were they? Or were they?
Howard
From a piece of WHO literature:
http://www.who.int/management/programme/health_promotion/MakeRoadsSafe.pdf
"In 2002 more than 7000 people were still being killed
each year on French roads. By 2005 fewer than 5000
people were killed, a drop of more than 20%. Interest-
ingly road user behaviour began to change soon af-
ter the highly publicised speech by the President and
the announcement of new road safety enforcement
measures, but well before the measures for penalis-
ing traffic offences were actually put in place. The
President’s high profile political act of making road
safety a priority issue was decisive in encouraging a
corresponding change in the public’s attitude and in
driver behaviour.
The Government also allocated €400 million to a 3
year investment plan to purchase automatic radar
devices and breath testing equipment and to set up
computer centres for the automatic monthly process-
ing of hundreds of thousands of speeding offences.
This was reinforced by a sustained communica-
tions campaign using hard hitting media messages.
Though the sums involved may appear consider-
able, the amount spent on new road safety actions
since 2003 demonstrate a significant rate of return.
The economic benefits in reduced crash costs for the
country represent 50 times the annual amount spent
on road safety promotion10.
The success of President Chirac’s initiative has en-
couraged other nations to follow his example. Italy, for
example, has achieved a similar improvement in RTI
numbers through the introduction of a driving licence
penalty point system."
For some reason this very rarely gets mentioned. The inclusion of a commitment to reducing the death toll on French roads in the President's decree was about as an impromptu political act as can be imagined. He pretty made it up on the spot and saved tens of thousands of lives.
The British don't kill each other on the roads in quite the same way as the French but there are lessons to be learned.