The number of people killed or seriously injured in accidents on Fife’s roads is 67% lower on routes with speed cameras than elsewhere, Fife Safety Camera Partnership claims.
And numbers of people caught speeding and issued with fixed penalties have also been reduced following camera enforcement.
Scotland’s Road Safety Framework has said up to 20% of the 24,000 young drivers who pass the test each year will be involved in a crash in the first six months of driving, mainly due to inexperience.
The Fife partnership, run jointly by several agencies including the police, fire and ambulance services, the council and NHS Fife, is promoting the New Drivers’ Act to hammer home the message that all new drivers are subject to a two-year probationary period when their licence can be revoked if they accrue just six penalty points. This means they could lose their licence with a single speeding conviction.
It also highlighted that a third of all road crashes involve someone who is driving for work purposes, with more employees killed in at-work road accidents than in all other occupational accidents.
The partnership’s third target group is motorcyclists, who made up 17% of fatal and serious road crashes in Fife between 2004 and 2008, leaving 105 people killed or seriously injured.
A leaflet of top tips for safer biking has been produced and is being distributed through Bikesafe Fife, an initiative run by Fife Constabulary to help cut casualties.
Partnership manager Andy Jones said that as well as reducing the number of people killed and injured on the roads, the partnership’s main aims were to make speeding as socially unacceptable as drink-driving and change long-term driver behaviour in relation to speeding and running red lights.
“The partnership is working with road safety partners on a regular basis,” he said. “We’re watching out for you… ‘Slow down make Fife safer’ is a strapline developed to promote road safety in a way that encourages confidence from the community we are trying to protect.”
“Through education and enforcement we are sending a message to offenders that Fife will not tolerate speeding drivers. Casualty reduction is high on everyone’s agenda and communities in Fife can be rest assured that we are watching out for them and resources are in place to drive forward the road safety message.”
Photo used under a Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user amandabhslater.