First Road Safety Strategy in 10 years to be published

Later this year, the Government will publish the first new Road Safety Strategy in 10 years, Heidi Alexander has told the Transport Committee.

“We want to get it right,” she said. “I have been in post for five months. It has been a source of discussion with me and the junior ministerial team. In any other sphere of activity we would not think it acceptable that 1,600 people are killed doing something each year. That is the situation on our roads at the moment. We have a duty to act. We want to look at the right package of measures to put in the road safety strategy; we are working on it and there will be further announcements in due course.”

National Highways must step up its efforts to improve road safety, she said. It is required to deliver a series of safety improvements as part of this year’s interim settlement of £4.8bn it received from Government. She told the committee: “It has set that out in its safety action plan for 2025-26. Whether there are collisions happening on the strategic road network for which National Highways is responsible, or the local highway network for which local highways authorities are responsible, a death is a death; a serious injury is a serious injury.”

Transport Committee member Steff Aquarone, LibDem MP for North Norfolk, said: “It is not just about policy or agency action; it is a fundamental oversight in both the design and maintenance of our road networks at both levels but also in policing priorities and the importance placed on road safety improvements by local councils above and beyond road repair and maintenance.”

Heidi Alexander said that, as Deputy Mayor of London for Transport, she published London’s first Vision Zero strategy. “Part of that was focused on a safe systems approach where we looked at not only how to drive safer behaviours among all different types of road users but how to design and deliver safer streets, speeds and vehicles.

“We introduced the direct vision standard to improve visibility from lorries and other heavy goods vehicles. You are right that the interaction with roads policing and the experience of individuals when they have been involved in a collision, and what learning can be taken from that collision to ensure you do not have the same collision happening in the same place with the same type of road user again, is really important.”