Will public be given speed guns in road safety crackdown?
MEMBERS of the public could be issued with speed guns and encouraged to report drivers going too fast, under radical plans to eliminate road deaths.
As part of the same proposals, cars would also be fitted with aeroplane-style ‘black boxes’ that can report dangerous driving to the authorities, with unsafe motorists ordered to attend courses.
The Scottish Government will unveil plans for a major shake-up of our roads and how we drive this week.
On Tuesday, it will start a consultation on introducing ‘safe systems’ in Scotland – a model used in countries such as Sweden and Norway – in an ambitious bid to halve deaths and major injuries by 2030, and eliminate them by 2050.
That would mean rethinking Scotland’s road use, vehicles and driving speeds to drastically reduce the chances that a mistake at the wheel can cost someone’s life. However, experts believe to do this properly will cost the Scottish Government billions of pounds.
The Government is being advised by the road charity Brake, which has set out on its website how the system could work in practice.
It calls for more 20mph roads, more crash barriers and for pedestrians and cyclists to be segregated from cars.
To better enforce lower speed limits, it calls for initiatives where ‘community members use speeddetection devices to monitor vehicle speed, with the support of the police’.
Similar Community Speedwatch initiatives have been launched elsewhere in the UK, where members of the public are given equipment by police to monitor speeds. While it does not lead to penalties, drivers caught going too fast can receive police warning letters.
From 2022, all new cars sold in Europe and the UK will be required to be fitted with Event Data Recorders, the equivalent of an aeroplane’s black box.
On its website, Brake states: ‘Invehicle technologies may be used to give safety feedback and reduce risky behaviours by monitoring how a vehicle is driven, and feeding back information on speed, seatbelt use, hard acceleration and braking.
‘Drivers who do not follow rules are required to undertake further education, for example, through the UK’s National Driver Offender
Retraining Scheme (NDORS) course.’
Neil Greig, of IAM Road Smart, who has also advised the Scottish Government on improving road safety, believes the biggest improvements will come from road redesign. That could mean removing trees from the side of a road which might contribute to a fatality if a driver were to lose control.
Equally, more signposts and lampposts are being built so they bend on impact, rather than cause serious damage to a car.
Mr Greig said: ‘For me, a safe system is about trying to design out the possibility for human beings to kill each other by accidents on the road. It’s accepting humans make mistakes and designing roads and cars that minimise that.’
Transport Scotland said it was too early to set out the details of its own safe system, but it would be based around the themes of safe roads and roadsides, safe speeds, safe vehicles, safe road use and post-crash response.
A spokesman said: ‘Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2030 will be built on the safe system – an approach with people at its centre.’
‘Technologies can help to reduce risky behaviours’