What is Road Safety Week?
Road Safety Week is the UK's biggest annual campaign promoted by Brake, the road safety charity and its aim is to promote and raise awareness for road safety. This year, Road Safety Week will take place from 16 November to 22 November. Throughout the week, thousands of organisations, schools and communities across the UK will be carrying out events to support road safety.
This year, the theme of Road Safety Week is safe vehicles, one of the five key pillars of the Safe System Approach. Each year, more than 1,700 people die on roads in the UK, with a further 30,000 suffering life-changing injuries. Brake advocates that every road traffic collision is preventable and that safe vehicles would significantly reduce these figures.
What is the Safe System Approach?
In our Road Safety Week series, we will explain what the Safe System Approach is and examine in further detail the five key pillars.
The Safe System Approach is a best practice model, adopted in numerous countries across the globe. It was first adopted in Sweden and the Netherlands. It is an approach to road safety management based on the simple principle that our need to travel should not compromise our lives or health. The system is designed to shift responsibility from individual road users to create a system which prevents crashes when possible, or when they do occur, they are less likely to result in fatal or life-altering injuries. It does this by creating a road network which can accommodate human error and vulnerability, designing more effective road infrastructure, managing speed, developing safe vehicles, promoting safe road user behaviours and improving post-crash response. The Safe System Approach is considered to be international best practice in road safety by the World Health Organization (WHO).
At the heart of the Safe System Approach is a shift in responsibility for road safety being with the individual road user to a shared responsibility. This includes policymakers, road planners, vehicle manufacturers, engineers, educators and the media, to name a few. Whilst individual road users also bear responsibility for compliance with the rules, the approach is also based upon an acknowledgement that people make mistakes and the system should accommodate these inevitable human errors. A further key principle is that people are vulnerable to being killed or seriously injured when travelling at certain speeds and certainly those in excess of 30mph.
Essentially, the approach is designed with the aim of ensuring that all aspects of the road structure work together to minimise the chances of a crash and, if a crash does occur, to prevent serious injuries or death occurring.
What are the five key pillars of the Safe System Approach?
The Safe System Approach is built on five key pillars: Safe Roads, Safe Speeds, Safe Vehicles, Safe Road Users and Post-Crash Care. Each week, we’ll explore one of these pillars in more detail as we count down to Road Safety Week 2025, which runs from 16 November to 22 November.
Safe Roads is the first of the five key pillars of the Safe System Approach. Its purpose is to design infrastructure that protects all road users. Safe Roads requires roads to be designed to reduce the risk of crashes occurring or if a crash does occur, to minimise the severity of any injuries.
How do we create safe roads?
There are a number of ways to create safe roads, as set out below:
1. Segregating vulnerable road users: One of the most prevalent dangers is different types of road users sharing the same space. In 2023, Transport Scotland reported that 3,385 casualties involved car users, 939 involved pedestrians and 473 involved motorcyclists. To protect all road users, the Safe System Approach requires the development of safer routes for vulnerable users, such as pedestrians and cyclists.
Examples of further protection for cyclists include segregated cycle lanes, clear signage, road markings and traffic calming measures. These reduce the number of vehicles on the roads and make them safer. Regular maintenance of bike lanes is also essential.
To protect pedestrians, safer pedestrian crossings should be developed. Road layouts should be designed to reduce risks in the event of a collision. This may include constructing and maintaining footways and working with schools to develop safer walking routes for children. It also involves ensuring sufficient lighting in areas used by pedestrians and improving visibility in dangerous areas, including hidden corners and blind spots.
2. Segregating vehicles: Traffic moving in different directions and at varying speeds should be segregated. It is not surprising that vehicles travelling in opposite directions pose a serious risk and by limiting this where possible, the risk can be reduced. An example would be installing crash barriers to separate opposing lanes of traffic. Ensuring infrastructure and road markings are well maintained also plays an important role.
3. Self-explaining roads: Self-explaining roads are designed to ensure that the driver is aware of what is expected of them through the road layout, rather than relying solely on signage. This causes the driver to act appropriately in response.
Each class of road is instantly unique, with its own carriageway width, road markings, signing and use of street lighting. The purpose of this design is to decrease driver stress and minimise driver error. The layout of these roads aims to reduce the impact of errors when they occur, through wider hard shoulders and clearer sightlines. Many roads in the UK follow this approach already. Ensuring every road meets this standard will help improve safety.
4. Proactive approach: A proactive approach to roads is required to ensure improvements are constantly being made to enhance both the actual and perceived risks of road safety. This includes additional engineering measures being implemented to remedy risks, such as improving road surfaces, swiftly dealing with potholes, removing obstacles that restrict vision and installing traffic lights.
It is evident that identifying and implementing these measures will improve road safety and reduce hazards and the risks of crashes occurring, meaning safe roads for all road users.
How is the Safe System Approach used in Scotland?
In February 2021, the Scottish Government published The Road Safety Framework to 2030, setting targets to reduce road deaths and serious injuries by 2030. To achieve this, the Framework aims to deliver a road safety environment based upon the five pillars of the Safe System Approach. The Government considers it necessary to embed this approach to achieve its long-term vision of zero fatalities and serious injuries on Scotland's roads by 2050.
MFMac and Brake
MFMac is proud to be on Brake's Scottish legal panel and support their aim of providing excellent post-crash care by taking a trauma-informed approach to advising individuals of their rights to make a claim for compensation, whilst assisting and supporting them throughout the legal process.
