Road Safety Week

This week has been termed Road Safety Week, with a campaign being launched to ‘Drive Less, Live More’. Each year Road Safety Week has a different theme and this year it is about encouraging drivers to consider how and when they travel, paying particular attention to those unnecessary journeys when, even though more convenient, taking the car is unnecessary. Motorists are being asked to ditch some of those drives and give walking, cycling, or public transport a go wherever possible.

Figures show that two-thirds of trips are made by car, including four in ten trips of less than two miles. Average walking trips per person have decreased by 27% since 1995. A quarter of adults in England are obese, with the cost to the NHS of people being overweight is estimated at £4.2 billion a year. Incorporating activity such as walking and cycling into everyday life is effective for losing weight.

In 2013, 1770 people were killed and 22,377 people seriously injured on UK roads. The vast majority of casualties are attributable to driver error. On average a family can save £642 a year by swapping a car-based school run for waking or cycling. Also, 22% of UK greenhouse gas emissions come from road transport.

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