Brake's submission to the Transport Select

Committee for its inquiry into:

Traffic Policing and Technology

(prepared by Brake, the road safety charity, Feb 2006)

Background information on Brake’s work

Brake is the national road safety charity, dedicated to stopping deaths and injuries on roads and to caring for people bereaved and affected by road crashes. Brake carries out research into road users’ attitudes on aspects of road safety, including traffic law and its enforcement. It also works with people bereaved and seriously injured in road crashes to campaign for changes in the law, which will benefit road safety.

Brake is a registered charity funded by donations and Government departments – Home Office, Department for Transport, and the Department of Health.

Like anyone who breaks the law and endangers lives, drivers who break laws on the road should expect to be caught and punished for their risky behaviour. Drivers who cause death and injury, or put their own and others’ lives at risk through their illegal driving; and companies running fleets of vehicles which do not follow safe procedures, must be caught and deterred through effective traffic policing.

Comprehensive traffic law and its enforcement is central to Brake campaigning. Since our inception, we have campaigned for better enforcement of improved traffic laws, which is key to preventing deaths and injuries on roads as one of the 3 critical ‘E’s – Engineering, Enforcement and Education.

Follow the below link for our campaign information sheet on traffic policing needs, including our main campaign objectives in this area:

http://www.brake.org.uk/index.php?p=273

If this link does not work, please go to www.brake.org.uk, then click on campaigns, then click on ‘Beware Justice Ahead’ and click on the sheet about road policing.

Answers to the inquiries specific questions:

Are traffic officers adequately resourced, trained and supported?

No.

1.  Ad hoc, officers across the country complain of under-resourcing and lack of training. They do so with passion and no small level of concern.

2.  Some forces – a survey would be required to say how many – appear to have entirely or partially disbanded their traffic units, making traffic enforcement the duty of other departments, such as armed response units who are routinely ‘on-road’. This is inadequate as traffic officers require specialist training.

3.  Even if an officer is a dedicated traffic officer, the committee needs to consider the range of duties a traffic officer may undertake when considering their resourcing levels. Sometimes traffic officers, for example, are also trained to be Family Liaison Officers (FLOs). This duty involves working with families bereaved by road death, and helping them through the ‘police process’. This duty in itself is very time consuming (for example, attending court cases and inquests with the family, visiting them in their home to explain the police investigation, and generally being ‘on call’ to answer their questions). Yet even in this remit some forces are failing. Some are so stretched that they only allow a family access to a FLO if the death of their loved one is going to result in a death by dangerous driving charge (in cases of road death, this charge is much less common that lesser charges).

What impact has the joint Roads Policing Strategy had on the work of traffic officers? How has it influenced the priority given to roads policing and the resources invested?

None noted, but this may be the case in some forces.

Have police forces across the UK got the balance right between technology-led enforcement and officers carrying out road policing duties? What evidence is there that the changing balance between officers and technology has influenced casualty reduction rates?

The following duties, and many others doubtless, cannot be undertaken without officers present:

a)  tests for alcohol and drugs

b)  seat belt checks

c)  mobile radar gun speed checks

d)  vehicle maintenance checks

e)  spotting driver tiredness or other impairments (weaving)

f)  spotting mobile phone use

g)  advice and information giving to drivers

h)  community engagement (working with communities to understand their enforcement needs)

Also, the coverage of speed cameras and ANPR technology is often exaggerated. There are many sites where this technolology should be used and it is not.

How effective and how efficient is roads policing in reducing the number of road casualties?

In Victoria, Australia, there was a concerted effort to increase traffic policing to tackle drink drivers. This included increasing resources and also increasing powers. Police are allowed to road block and randomly test at key locations and key times (eg. late at night near pubs and clubs). The results have been significant decreases in drink driving.

Another important benefit of effective traffic policing is its ‘link’ to one of the other critical Es – education. If traffic policing is effective, and clearly present, then ad campaigns on TV, radio and in cinemas can be created to support this policing – along the lines of ‘commit an offence on the road and you WILL be caught.’ At present, in the UK, there is no such evident deterrent, with the exception of the use of speed cameras, which relates to only one, albeit important, offence on roads, and, strangely, was not supported by an ad campaign nationally.

Roads policing is particularly powerful at reducing particular types of particularly dangerous road use. For example, young, usually male, drivers who steal cars, or drive unlicensed or uninsured, who speed, and take drugs and alcohol. Brake supports families who have been bereaved by such drivers on a regular basis. We frequently come across cases where a driver has been caught driving unlicensed, been fined, but then chosen to drive unlicensed and dangerously again and consequently killed. Offenders clearly make these decisions to drive illegally because they do not think, often rightly, that they will be caught. But the cost is often someone’s life.

In summary, roads policing is critical to road safety, in the same way that policing our communities is critical to general law and order, otherwise the law simply has no teeth.

Are police forces concentrating traffic enforcement on the right areas and activities to achieve maximum casualty reduction?

Brake has long-complained about the placement of speed cameras. Nearly all cameras must, at present, be placed where there have been casualties. We believe this is the wrong approach. We should not have to wait for death or serious injury before enforcing safety. We believe cameras should be in all communities, around schools and homes, as well as on major trunk roads. The Government has announced that it is changing the rules on camera placement so we are hopeful that this will result in more cameras in areas where there are people on foot and bicycles, who need protecting from speeding drivers, as well as on light-traffic rural roads which are often plagued by speeding, overtaking drivers who can be lethal to themselves and other road users.

There should also be regular and high profile traffic police checks, and panda car patrols, in communities of all sizes. Most communities we talk to do not report evidence of checks on seat belts, mobile phone use, or even radar gun speed checks on a regular basis in their areas.

To what extent do approaches to traffic enforcement and casualty reduction differ between forces across the country?

Widely in our experience. Some, for example, have introduced ‘FIT’ drug testing. Others have not. Some have traffic units, others do not. Some have an annual ‘plan’ of enforcement checks – eg. ‘this month it’s seatbelts’ – and others do not. Some are heavily involved in community education programmes – and others are not. Only a comprehensive survey – which Brake intends to do this year – would help identify these regional differences.

How have technological developments affected both the detection and enforcement of drivers impaired through alcohol, drugs and fatigue? Is the best use being made of these technologies? What legislative, strategic and operational changes would improve the effectiveness of these technologies?

Drugs: Brake welcomes the ‘FIT’ testing for drugs and is encouraged that a medical roadside test for drugs is currently in development and wish this technology to be approved successfully and used as soon as possible. However, this needs to be supported by relevant laws – eg. a law banning driving on illegal drugs (there isn’t one) and a law for killing someone under the influence of illegal drugs (at present the law has to prove the driver was impaired by the drugs, not just on them.) There also needs to be an effective high profile advertising campaign on TV on the dangers of driving on drugs – there has never been one.

Fatigue: Fatigue detection and enforcement is still a difficult area although we are pleased that following some high profile crashes – eg. the Selby crash that killed 10 men – there have been detailed investigations that have enabled fatigue to be proved (in this case, through internet records proving the driver was awake the night before). For drivers at work, the working hours regulations are not in line with academic advice – which is that drivers should only drive if they have had a good night’s sleep, and should take regular breaks of at least 15 minutes at least every two hours. We also need more national TV advertising campaigns.

Alcohol: The main hindrance to effective alcohol detection is the requirement for police to suspect an offence has been committed (eg. by spotting a weaving vehicle), rather than the power to randomly stop vehicles in targeted locations such as near pubs late at night. Brake has also campaigned for the drink drive limit to be reduced – ours is among the highest in Europe which conflicts with Government and Brake and local authority campaigns encouraging drivers to have ‘not a drop’.

However, we welcome the development of alco-locks but would like to see their use rolled out. We also believe that this use of technology to prevent offenders reoffending should be expanded to use of tagging for unlicensed as well as drunk drivers (see comments above about repeat offenders).

How will the new funding arrangement announced by the Secretary of State affect the work of the road safety camera partnerships?

It is hard to tell, although the Government indicates it will be more money and therefore consequently we can hope for more resources locally. If this includes resources for engineering measures, such as safety zones around schools, this will be a good thing, but we would not want to see a decrease in cameras, rather an increase.

Brake, is concerned that the move by Government to require expenditure on a range of RS measures, not just cameras, is simply creating one more capital ‘pot’ that locally has to be bid for. Capital pots are inevitably restricted in size by central Government.

Brake would prefer all funds from speed cameras to be given to the areas in which the funds are collected, and ploughed back into road safety measures in those areas, and for all Local Transport Plans (LTPs) to be transparent in their expenditure of funds on road safety measures, whether it is cameras or engineering.

Often it is difficult to work out how much has been spent on specific road safety improvements, such as Home Zones, and how much on other measures such as general road maintenance. The Government doesn’t even centrally record how many 20mph limits there are in the UK, so it is very hard even to know national progress on development of road safety engineering issues that are in dire need of development in many urban areas.

What lessons can be learned from the experience of speed limit enforcement using camera technology?

1.  It works.

2.  It requires support through intensive education campaigns.

3.  The majority of people remain supportive of cameras, despite a backlash from motoring organisations and from some media.

4.  Cameras slow down traffic and therefore should be placed outside schools and communities – before a death or injury has occurred, not after.

How effective are multi-agency approaches to safety issues? What steps are required to improve partnership work between the police, Department for Transport, local authorities and other agencies?

1.  There needs to be much more responsibility taken by national Government to monitor what is occurring locally. There should be recording of local activity by the DfT so it can monitor progress, eg. spread of 20mph limits, use of speed cameras, etc.

2.  The DfT and the Home Office need to work much closer together to understand the importance of road policing and to ensure that it is at last a key objective on the national policing plan.

3.  While we have regional traffic policing, police forces should be required to report levels of offending in different areas of traffic to national government, eg. alcohol, drugs, mobile phone, seat belt, speed. They should then be required to set targets, approved by the Home Office, for the following year. There should be public ‘league tables’ published of performance in these areas.

4.  At a local level, it is vital that the Local Authority and the police service work together to support each other. Local enforcement campaigns must be supported by local advertising / education campaigns.

ALL QUERIES ON THIS MEMORANDA SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO CATHY KEELER, POLICY DIRECTOR, ON 01484 559912 OR 01484 559909 OR EMAIL TO