Meeting of the Parliament 17 March 2015
Road safety is of paramount importance to this Government and we are committed to reducing casualties and saving lives on roads across Scotland, including the A9. A lot of expertise on the issue has been brought to the table in the debate, along with personal experience and understanding that each accident is a tragedy for all those involved. As transport minister, I am informed every time that there is a fatality on any road in Scotland, which does not make pleasant reading, because of course lying behind each fatality is a family or community affected. That is the level of seriousness with which we approach the subject.
I, too, congratulate Mike MacKenzie on securing the debate and David Stewart for the way in which the Labour Party has engaged very helpfully in it. Even Murdo Fraser, a man renowned for his balance and modesty, contributed to the debate and engaged in the debate with an open mind. That is fair, and it is better than the closed-minded approach of some who have engaged in the debate outwith this chamber in a more opportunistic fashion.
As well as the loss of human life, there is the cost of the disruption that is caused by accidents. I commit again to the Government seeing through the dualling work on the A9 at a cost of an estimated £3 billion by 2025. That is 80 miles of work in quite challenging circumstances, but that commitment is strong, and I have to say that it is a first for a Scottish Executive or a Scottish Government to commit to those works. We will complete them as quickly as we possibly can.
Education and driver behaviour are important, and we will continue to support educational campaigns led by the road safety partnership to address issues such as inappropriate driver behaviour, including excessive speed, close following and unsafe overtaking, which contribute to a significant proportion of road accidents generally. We will do that in partnership. A range of other works is going on, not just the deployment of the average-speed cameras, but works such as new lining and signing, vegetation clearance, high-profile visible policing and targeted education campaigns.
A key point is that the average-speed cameras have been deployed based on evidence and at the points on the route with the highest accident records. Some people have called the cameras money-generating schemes, but they are not. They are about safety and they are deployed where they make the biggest difference, and the evidence tells us that they are making a difference.
In the spring of last year, 78 per cent of members of the public who were asked for their views anticipated that such cameras would be “effective” or “very effective” in making the route safer. Recent surveys and polls, such as that published in The Press and Journal, have suggested that a majority of people think that they are having a positive impact on driver behaviour. Fifty-six per cent of those surveyed by The Press and Journal felt that the average-speed cameras have had a positive effect.
I take Murdo Fraser’s point about public opinion, but I would argue that public opinion has moved as the experience has been that the cameras make a difference on the ground. The evidence from the stats that we have from the first performance figures show that excessive speeding is down, and that is often the bane of journeys between Perth and Inverness. It has been reduced by 97 per cent, and speeding overall is down from one in three vehicles to one in 20. Change of that magnitude reflects significant improvements in driver behaviour.
I have been comprehensive in my response, and I would say to Liam McArthur that we need to look at accident statistics as well. However, the figures that we have tell a positive story about how speeding has come down. I believe that the incidents and the disruption caused are also falling. Despite comments to the contrary, traffic is not diverting from the A9 on to other roads. The A9 is very much open for business, and there is better journey time reliability. I accept that there has been a slight increase for some in the average journey times, on a scale of between three and 14 minutes, but I believe that that is a price worth paying for a safer road.