New Approach to Road Accidents
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ATTACKING Britain's official attitude to road accidents, Mr. J. Leeming, County Surveyor. and Engineer, Dorset County Council, said on Tuesday that the first step towards stopping accidents must be to eliminate the present primary object
of punishing drivers, '
Basing his conclusions on research lasting 20 years, Mr. Leeming, who was speaking to the All-Party Roads Study Group in the House of Commons, called for an entirely new approach to the problem.
If the object were to stop accidents and regard the allocation of blame as irrelevant, the subject could be viewed differently, he maintained.
° Investigation into accidents should be taken out of the hands of the police and given to a traffic corps under the control of the highway authority. Known blackspots should be eliminated by traffic engineering methods, while the corps was being formed, he said.
The error of trying to eliminate the cost of highway improvements was illustrated by Mr. Leeming when he quoted figures from his own county. Double white lines over 19 miles had, up to April I, caused accidents to increase by 20 per cent., he stated.
But, improved bends, roundabouts and staggered cross-roads in seven places had reduced accidents by between 37-100 per cent.
He added that other British highway experts had found that road construction on entirely new lines had reduced the number of accidents on comparable roads by 97 per cent,