BUYING SAFETY
Page 64
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OMISE of a "new approach" to road safety in Mrs. Barbara Castle's latest White Paper can hardly indicate a change for the worse for the road transport operator. He has often been the victim of varied approaches to the subject. The back-to-the-rail movement has aimed at creating the impression that the road safety problem would be solved by the simple expedient of switching traffic from one form of transport to the other.
The David and Goliath fantasy has taken as its starting point the assumption that the danger increases in almost geometrical proportion to the size of the vehicle. Press reports have promoted the idea that an accident involving a lorry—and especially an articulated lorry—is somehow more reprehensible than other accidents.
New technique
What is new in the White Paper is the resolve to study the cost of measures advocated to improve road safety and set the costs against the results likely to be achieved. The technique is described as "cost-effectiveness analysis". It is still in an early stage, says the White Paper, but preliminary results are encouraging and "the .Ministry will be developing the technique as well as developing its action programme in the light of the results."
Examples are given of what has already been discovered. It has been suggested that drivers who passed the test should display a special plate on their vehicles during a probationary period and should then sit a further test. For each death or serious injury saved by this procedure, says the White Paper, it would cost the community at least 30 times as much as would, for example, new street lighting on a busy road in a built up area.
A requirement for protective guards on goods vehicles is described in the White Paper as a "promising possibility". It would do far more to prevent accidents than, for example, compulsory medical tests for elderly drivers. On the other hand, it would save rather fewer casualties for a given expenditure than the improvement of sight lines at carefully chosen rural junctions. Cost-effectiveness analysis justifies the high priority now being given to a nation-wide programme of improvements to the running surface of roads at bends and skid-spots.
Questions unanswered Some important questions are left unanswered by the White Paper. It is not clear what categories of cost are to be taken into account and what, perhaps, ignored. No doubt where the Government pays directly for road improvement the cost can easily be ascertained and will certainly be included in any analysis. Payment for measures affecting the design and performance of vehicles, on the other hand, will fall on the operators. Other regulations, such as restrictions on parking or on loading and unloading, may be of more concern to other sections of the community. Ideally, costs at all levels should be given their due place.
The number and the variety of the items which ought to be included make complete accuracy difficult if not impossible. Road operators may justifiably be suspicious of cost analysis over such a wide field. They will remember the impact of a comparison of track costs carried out by the railways and proving to their satisfaction that commercial vehicle operators were getting their share of the roads on the cheap. Other investigations on the same subject came up with widely differing answers. On road safety problems equally, the Ministry will have to be careful that it has the proper statistics and is interpreting them correctly.
Opinions differ That opinions may differ on significance has been illustrated by the discussion on the 70 m.p.h. speed limit. Mrs. Castle has no doubts about the lesson to be learned from the report of the Road Research Laboratory. With the speed limit in operation there were 480 fewer fatalities and casualties on motorways, a reduction of about 20 per cent. "I accept the evidence," the Minister told the House of Commons, "as clearly establishing that the 70 m.p.h. limit has reduced casualties on the motorways."
This did not completely satisfy Mr. Peter Walker, the Conservatives' main spokesman on transport. He suggested that there were other statistics in the report that gave a different picture from that of Mrs. Castle. In the year before the experiment with the 70 m.p.h. limit there had also been a reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured. During the experiment there was an increase in police activity, different fog lighting was installed and commercial vehicles were forbidden to use the fast lane of three
lane motorways. All these things might have had an effect on the statistics, said Mr. Walker.
The White Paper admits that there are limitations to the cost-effectiveness technique. Even when these have been taken into account the new approach remains basically the correct one. It will enable priorities to be drawn up. An orderly queue can be formed for the long list of measures which ought to be taken as well as the even longer list of those which are advocated often passionately by organizations or individuals with axes to grind or with bees in the bonnet.
Natural reaction Genuine concern over the increase in road accidents is a natural reaction. Too often it leads to wild and almost hysterical allegations which do nothing to help the road safety campaign and may even distract attention from the measures which ought to be taken or in other words are the most cost-effective. The commercial vehicle operator would be justified in feeling the most aggrieved about this. He is too often the target of an indiscriminate attack which obscures the main issue.
There is at least an indication in the White Paper that the Government may be able to help on this point as well. There is to be a "fully integrated" three-year programme of public information and publicity. Its main objectives are said to be to increase the capacity of the road user to deal with particular hazards; to "induce a more positive attitude to road safety"; and to alter the behaviour of the road user "so that he does not put himself or others at risk".
With some relief it may be noted that the publicity programme will apparently itself be subject to the discipline of cost-effectiveness analysis. This may be inferred from the promise that the results of each phase will be tested by social surveys and that the programme will be adapted "in response to the reactions we get as we go on". In the past, millions of pounds have been spent on road safety publicity and seldom has there been a discernible effect. Even that small effect has been subject to the law of diminishing returns. There is no theme to which the public becomes more quickly hardened.