Road Safety Unit provides vital service
Sir,
I write on behalf of Lochgilphead High School’s Parent Council regarding one of Argyll and Bute Council’s proposed budget savings for 2018/19.
Option TB16-3, which comes under the ‘Economic Development – Strategic Transportation’ heading, reads: ‘Reduce road safety materials budget and remove the Road Safety Unit.’
This short sentence has major implications not just for every parent in Argyll and Bute but for every resident, regardless of age.
The Road Safety Unit provides a vital service to the 12,000 primary and secondary pupils spread right across the council area. It also works with our Early Years bases.
From initiatives including ‘Streetfeet’ pedestrian training, the Road Safety Magic Show, Streetsense2 and the ‘icycle’ cycle training in the primary sector to ‘Your Call’, ‘Crash Magnets’ and presentations by the Baldy Bane Theatre Company in secondary schools, the Road Safety Unit challenges all pupils to take responsibility not just for their own safety but for the safety of others.
These are not just the young pedestrians, cyclists and passengers of today – they are Argyll and Bute’s drivers of tomorrow.
The Road Safety Unit was also the first in Scotland to introduce a grant to new drivers to encourage participation in Pass Plus training. Many other Scottish local authorities now do the same.
Argyll and Bute Council’s Road Safety Unit is at the forefront of road safety education in Scotland. We are shocked its existence is now hanging in the balance.
The 1988 Road Traffic Act stipulates that it is the responsibility of the local authority to ‘prepare and carry out a programme of measures designed to promote road safety’. It also states that local authorities should ‘take measures to prevent accidents, including the dissemination of information and advice relating to the use of roads, and the giving of practical training to any class of road user’.
Removing the Road Safety Unit would render Argyll and Bute Council incapable of fulfilling these responsbilities. The apparent attempt at justifying the saving by stating ‘road safety information available through other organisations’ is, at best, misleading. There is no ‘other organisation’ which can teach road safety to young people across Argyll and Bute. And if the inference is that the police will take up the slack, our understanding is that Police Scotland now very much concentrates on enforcement rather than education.
The Scottish Government has set ambitious road casualty reduction targets, and the Road Safety Unit liaises closely with Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue in working to achieve these targets across Argyll and Bute.
Road safety is an issue which affects everyone. As well as being traumatic and often tragic, accidents are very expensive. Transport Scotland’s Reported Road Casualties Scotland 2016 report put the average cost of a fatality at £2,161,725 and of a serious injury at £245,144.
At the budget meeting, councillors will be asked to agree to remove Argyll and Bute’s Road Safety Unit for a saving of just £84,000.
The work this unit does is vital to the current and future safety of Argyll and Bute’s population. We urge councillors in the strongest possible terms to reject this proposal.