. road safety is the art of the possible'
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OIVIE time ago when there was local pressure for the improvement of a certain stretch Of road, the official reply was that no accidents; had so far occurred at that particular spot and therefore the improvement could wait. Perhaps rightly there were expressions of indignation in Parliament and in the Press at what seemed the 'callous attitude of a Civil Servant towards the risks run by other peoPle.' it is indeed faintly alarming that a dangerous corner should be treated in the same way as the proverbial dog and allowed one victim before action is taken. But the incident eould easily recur arid illustrates the long distance which has to be covered before the problem of road safety is properly understood, let alone solved.
The suggestion that someone must be killed on a stretch of road befdre the authorities will do anything about it may be bound up with the other proposition sometimes put forward—that traffic offences are no different from other breaches of the law. No man can be arrested merely because his habits and character make it seem likely that sooner or later he will commit a crime. Once the deed is done all kinds of penalties can be exacted from him. The approach to traffic offences is in, many ways similar, Let the road user once infringe even one of the many hundreds of regulations to which he is subject and he becomes a marked man, In.some cases he may be deprived of his driving licence. On the other hand he may be what is known as accident-prone, although never, stepping outside what the law lays down.
For the greater proportion of the regulations governing road users the main reason is the desire to prevent accidents. There would otherwise be no need for speed limits, standards of vehicle maintenance, standards of road conduct and so on. The temptation which must be resisted is to regard the restrictions as ,desirable in themselves. This is to make the mistake of treating the symptoms instead of the disease. The resources available for accident prevention are not unlimited, and with millions of vehicles on the roads and millions more to come they can never be adequate. It is all the more important that the best possible use should be made of them,
Should Not Be Tolerated
There is some evidence that the deployment of a large staff of vehicle examiners on lorry checks all over the country is not the best use to which these officials can be put. Many operators have had a wholesome lesson. The deplorable state of their vehicles is something which should not be tolerated. These operators form only a small minority of the road transport industry as a whole. A very much larger number, those issued with delayed prohibitions, have been found to. run vehicles which are to a varying extent short of perfection.
The assumption behind the checks is that a defective vehicle is more likely than a perfect :vehicle to be responsible for an accident and that the grosser the defect the greater the likelihood. At no stage have the authorities
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responsible for carrying out the checks appeared to -find it necessary to offer proof that their assumption is correct. It would be unfair to say that little research has been carried out On this point; but the work which has been done does not seem to have produced conclusive results.
The Ministry of Transport no longer makes available each year the opinions of the police on the causes of accidents involving casualties. Such opinions obviously could not be accepted as a final verdict, but during the years when they were available it was not difficult to see that according to the police one or other of the drivers. was nearly always.to blame in an accident and that defects in a vehicle were rarely a contributory factor.
If there is anything in this judgment, the conclusion might be that too much time is spent in the checking and periodical testing of vehicles and not enough in assessing the competence of drivers. It must be accepted that a neglected vehicle will deteriorate more quickly than a human being, but there are cases where drivers develop. disabilities which could impair their driving skill. .Ability to pass a test on one occasion is considered sufficient for a lifetime. There' are strong' reasons why repetition of the test would not be feasible. Patient in many respects, the public would not tolerate this particular interference with the liberty of the individual.
In his paper at this week's conference of the Road Haulage Association, Mr. J. S. Orme, Under-Secretary, Ministry of Transport, made it clear that public opinion as well as financial considerations imposes limits on what can be done to promote road safety. He gave as an example the siting of a barrier, to segregate traffic, in the middle of a busy street with shops and warehouses or factories on both sides. The accident rate would go down, said Mr. Orme flatly. He went on to point out that there would be objections from ratepayers and from many users of the road and that the strength of the objections made the idea impracticable even if it would certainly save lives.
The admission is at least realistic. It should be read in conjunction with .the observation by the R.H.A, chairman, Mr. A. R. Butt, on the same occasion, that as long as there are motor vehicles on the roads there will be road accidents. Like politics, the promotion of road safety is the art of the possible. A useful treatise might be written to show the directions in which circumstances would permit measures designed to make the roads safer. Once these had been established attention could be turned to the items among them which experience and research had shown could be most fruitfully pursued and which should therefore have priority.
According to Mr. Orme there is still a great deal to be done. He spoke of the need for more information over the whole field of road safety. it was not at all easy, he said, to define precisely the significant factors contributing to accidents. The possible wide-scale use of computers for this purpose was being studied. He may also have taken back one or two ideas on the subject from Eastbourne.