All contents copyright ©, Drive and Stay Alive, Inc., 2003 onwards, unless specified otherwise. All rights reserved.

  IMPORTANT: click here to read the DISCLAIMER  

In most countries the number of road deaths each year far exceeds the number of murders and so, in terms of human suffering and grief, road safety is the much larger problem.

Police forces around the world have developed different ways of dealing with the road safety challenge and in this section of the website we will highlight some of those ways and the results they have achieved.

  To contact us with details for a police force or other law enforcement agency in your area, please click here.  

ARTICLES

  In Britain, in January 2004, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) published:

It contains interesting summaries on the status quo in the UK, as well as conclusions and recommendations for the British Government.

(Thank you to Tim -- one of our readers from Canada -- for bring this document to our attention; October 31, 2004)

  West Mercia Constabulary has been awarded the Prince Michael International Education and Training

Award. According to the judging panel, the team of officers and police staff has shown an outstanding commitment to road user education, which must go hand in glove with enforcement to be effective.

The West Mercia Constabulary have, since 2001, been running a five year programme of high profile publicity and enforcements campaigns , educating the public and enforcing road traffic laws aimed at reducing casualties on the road. 

The strategies employed by West Mercia's Traffic and Operations department include a number of important and extensive high-profile education and enforcement programmes in which the Constabulary, using 'intelligence-led' policing methods, focuses upon high-risk areas of road safety. Using both education and enforcement together in this way is a new and innovative idea which has helped to reduce casualties dramatically in West Mercia.

Assistant Chief Constable Margaret Wood, who is responsible for the county's road policing, said: "One of the key objectives of the Constabulary is reducing the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads. This award recognises the efforts of police officers and staff and we are all delighted to be recognised for our effective public education campaigns. We aim to reduce the number of families whose lives are blighted by road collisions and believe that the best way to change driver behaviour is through education. 

"Effective national campaigns have changed attitudes to drinking and driving and the use of seat belts, and I hope that campaigns such as ours will have a similar impact in saving lives and reducing injury.

"While we have achieved considerable success, the fact that more than 100 people were killed on our roads last year shows that there is still more work to be done."

West Mercia Constabulary's Road Safety Strategy includes an important and extensive high profile programme of road safety campaigns in which the force focuses on those areas which are known to be either causing casualties or are believed to be seriously contributing to an increased risk of injury to people involved in road traffic collisions.

Using a collision intelligence system, developed by the Transport Research Laboratory, collisions and their causation factors are plotted and logged onto a database where specific information such as when, where and how the collisions occurred, can be identified.

This information is then used to identify problematic times of the year, the frequency of collisions and collision cluster areas along with the types of road users who are involved in crashes, with a view to focussing publicity, education and enforcement on targeted routes, classes of vehicles and types of drivers/riders.

  Colonel Lonnie J. Westphal (retired) was selected as a 2003 recipient of the prestigious J. Stannard Baker Award 

for Highway Safety, by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, for his sustained, continuous, and career-spanning extraordinary initiative and creativity in developing and implementing traffic safety programs within and outside the State of Colorado. The other recipient was Sergeant John M. Lourenco, for his sustained, continuous, and career-spanning extraordinary initiative and creativity in developing and promulgating traffic safety programs within the City of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read the full details of these men's achievements, on the IACP website.

  In Canada, the winner of the 2002 National Police Award for Traffic Safety developed a database tool that supports

the goals of Road Safety Vision 2010. Sergeant Norman Gaumont of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, West Kootenay Traffic Services Unit, West Kootenay, British Columbia was honoured for designing a Traffic Service Management Information Tool that helps police target unsafe driving behaviours. The system identifies crash patterns and police responses, which enables police to manage traffic enforcement more effectively. Strategies developed using this computerized tool reduced deaths and injuries in the West Kootenay area.

Full story, from the Canada Safety Council