Blog posts tagged ‘safety’

According to a report carried out for the Department for Transport earlier this year, the most frequent factor associated with road accidents was failing to look properly.  This error was more frequent than speeding and was associated with 38% of accidents reported to the police, according to the Department for Transport’s Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2009 publication. It highlights the constant need to be aware of the risks of not looking properly when driving.  Something we know already but it does no harm to be reminded, especially as it’s something we as drivers have direct control over. 

From my experiences I know that many accidents occur at roundabouts, when the driver is looking to the right to see if there’s a gap to pull out into, all the while unaware that the car in front of them has stopped. This is likely to result in a rear end collision. Or maybe the driver is unaware that they are drifting out of their lane because they’re concentrating so hard on what’s coming from the right at the roundabout. This is something that occurs with learners, but also with more experienced drivers.

 Another time when you can see people not looking properly is when they get too used to a particular piece of road. It could be a quiet junction on an estate where “no one ever comes along this bit of road” so it’s easy to get complacent, and when someone does come along that bit of road the driver isn’t looking properly and pulls out into the path of another vehicle.

Or it could be something as simple as reversing out of a parking space in the supermarket car park and not making effective observations – possibly bumping into the person reversing out of the space behind you, who also isn’t looking properly.  A fairly regular occurrence.

If you want to avoid becoming one of the statistics on your lessons, or afterwards, remember to make sure you really know that the situation is clear before you act. Never assume that there isn’t anything there if you can’t see that to be the case. Always anticipate that there will be something coming until you know for sure that there isn’t. It’s always better to stop when you didn’t need to, than to go when you should have stopped.

Find out more from the RoSPA website:

According to a recent report compiled by the European Transport Safety Council, our roads are a lot safer than they were at the start of the millennium. In 2001, there were 3,598 deaths on UK roads. In 2009 there were 2,528 deaths. That’s a 30% reduction overall. There were 61 road deaths per million people in 2001. That figure has fallen to 41 per million in 2009. This figure ranks the UK as second safest only to Sweden in the EU (Sweden having 39 deaths per million of the people). This compares with Romania where the figure is 130 deaths per million, making Romania the most dangerous place to drive/cross the road etc within Europe, closely followed by Greece, with 129 deaths/million.  For further information click here.

Recently an incident occurred on one of my driving lessons just after the Maypole roundabout near the Kings Heath test centre, during which my pupil had to take evasive action due to a small child of no more than 6 years of age running straight across a pelican crossing that was showing a green light to drivers. Fortunately, my pupil had reduced her speed on approach to the crossing, in anticipation of such an incident.  But many drivers would not have, and the consequences could have been horrific. 
 

This got me thinking about how road safety education seems to have changed over the years. Nowadays we are quite likely to see adverts targeted towards drivers. For example drink/drive campaigns, kill your speed and beware of bikers are a few that crop up from time to time. The emphasis is always on the driver. But there seems to be very little high profile road safety education for pedestrians (although many local authorities do have various initiatives within schools). This hasn’t always been the case as this video clip shows. Although it’s simplistic in its approach, I and many of my friends still remember the ad clearly, and the message has stuck with us throughout our lives, despite us being incredibly young when it first aired on TV.
 

A number of my pupils have commented recently on how learning to drive has made them better pedestrians, giving them a better understanding of the responsibilities they have to keep themselves safe whilst walking. If the above and other similar video clips were still being aired (or at least updated versions of them) they may appeal to the younger pedestrian, and who knows, maybe save some lives.