The Cost of Safety .
Page 57
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NO proposals for improvements in the layout and construction of roads are down for discussion at the National Safety Congress in London early next month. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the organizing body, has often urged that better roads would mean safer roads. It may feel that at present the chances of progress in this direction are small.
The British Road Federation has recently published correspondence, in the course of which the Ministry of Transport set out the dilemma facing IL The Federation had reminded the Ministry of a pre-war investigation into the causes of accidents on roads, undertaken in Oxfordshire by Lt.-Col. G. T. Bennett, who was at that time thd county surveyor. It was found that 59 per cent, of accidents could have been prevented by the removal of ordinary road defects, and 73 per cent, by a modernized road layout.
B.R.F.'s Suggestion Following improvements at points on five major roads, fatal accidents at those points were entirely eliminated and accidents involving serious injury were reduced by 76 per cent. The Federation suggested that £5m. be spent every year for 10 years in carrying out further investigations in different parts of the country.
The theme of the Ministry's reply may be given in one sentence. "What we lack is not knowledge, but the money to apply it." The Ministry agreed that road accidents could be substantially reduced by improvements in the highways, but the cost would be enormous.' To modernize the road system in London alone would cost hundreds of millions of pounds.
The road safety controversy is one in which all parties seem to be right. The Ministry has played an honourable part in the battle for safety and is justified , in stressing the financial difficulty. The least imaginative of people cannot fail to be horrified by the mounting toll of accidents on the roads. It is difficult even for the experts to know what action can be taken here.and now unless more money be made available.
Hopeless Task .
The Society and the road safety committees deserve every support. Their work has undoubtedly played an important part in stopping the monthly road accident total from being even more serious than it is. They are forced, however, to adopt a largely negative attitude. They have the almost hopeless task of plugging up defects in a system that should by. rights be entirely renewed. Through no fault of their own, their well meaning efforts to grapple with the problem fail to get at the root of the matter.
The human element is expected to bear too great a strain on present-day roads, many cf which are no more suitable for motor, traffic than Piccadilly Circus would be as a rifle range. The vigilance of the ordinary Member of the public, whether driver or pedestrian, is taxed almost beyond endurance. At the so-called "black spot," the chance of an accident occurring, sooner or later is inevitable. The word " fatality " acquires at such a place a sinister double meaning. From the feeling that it is useless to attempt to avoid "fate " is
born the resigned attitude of mind on the part cf the public that is often wrongly castigated as merely a callous disregard for the unhappy misfortunes of other people.
The most forceful publicity and the most vigorous restrictions upon road users must n the end reach their limit of effectiveness. If carried beyond a certain point they may have the opposite effect to that intended. The shock of the flamboyant poster soon wears off. Warning signs and exhortations, however necessary each one may appear to be, lead to confusion if there be too many of them. A multiplicity of regulations exasperates the public; thus producing the wrong frame of mind for road safety, and tends to be less scrupulously observed, thus bringing the law generally into disrepute.
Horse and Cart Days
There is no way of putting back the clock to the days of the horse and cart. The growth in the number of vehicles and the speed at which they travel cannot be slowed down beyond a certain point Improvements in braking performance and other aids to safety are important, but do not 'go the whole way. Sooner or later it will have to be admitted that further progress towards the elimination of road accidents depends upon improvements in the roads themselves.
As the Ministry has pointed out, the improvements in their turn depend upon the availability of money and labour, and particularly of money. An almost inpenetrable barrier stops expenditure on roads from increasing much beyond the present annual figure of between £60m. and £70m. As the natural opponents of road transport, the railways have had some influence in pre. venting road development. Ample justification is provided at the present time by general shortages of materials, men and money.
Discarded Pretence
Some form of taxation on users is the only practicable way of raising the necessary funds Successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have established the habit of syphoning off such funds in order to use them for other purposes. Licensing duties and fuel taxation may originally have been intended for expenditure on the roads. Even the pretence that it will be used for this purpose has long since been discarded.
Mr. Gaitskell, when he increased the fuel tax by 41,01. a gallon in this year's Budget, indicated plainly that all he had in mind was the obtaining of additional revenue. Road users now pay something like £250m. annually in special taxes, roughly four times the total amount spent on roads. Some of them perhaps would not begrudge this payment if it were earmarked for improving existing roads and building new ones.
There are weighty objections to any addition to the tax. It would increase the cost of transport and add another twist to the inflationary spiral. There is little likelihood at the moment that the Government would willingly return to the principle of devoting special funds to special purposes. The only practical course is to keep up the pressure on the Government to spend more money on the roads, for the improvement of industrial efficiency as well as road safety