Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2019
I welcome Brake and Stuart McMillan’s highlighting this week of the importance of road safety across the country. As others have done, I offer my thanks to Stuart McMillan for securing the debate, and I thank everyone who has made thoughtful contributions to it.
As Stuart McMillan, Maurice Corry and others have correctly stated, one death on Scotland’s roads is one too many. Families, friends and communities are left entirely traumatised following a road death, and the loss of a life can impact many others in profound ways. Such loss of life does not have to happen and we must do everything that we can to prevent it. We should also not lose sight of the fact that, as David Stewart said, there are many examples of people being seriously injured, the impact of which can be life changing.
Scotland has a proud history of road safety performance. I want not only to continue that record but to improve upon it, with the aim of becoming the safest country in the world. I cannot stress enough that road safety is of paramount importance to the Scottish Government. My colleagues and I recognise that we all have our part to play, as road safety is everyone’s responsibility.
This is an important time for road safety, as we near the end of our casualty reduction targets to 2020 and focus on the next decade. The European Commission recently published its road safety policy framework to 2030, which employs the safe system approach for the first time, systematically at European Union level, to underpin the target of a 50 per cent reduction in fatalities and serious injuries by 2030 from a 2020 baseline—an ambitious but worthwhile aim.
Before I touch on points raised by colleagues, I want to cover what has been happening here in Scotland. The 2018 casualty figures were recently published, and casualties were at the lowest level since records began. However, more people were killed on our roads last year than in 2017. That is a matter of great sadness, and it tells me that we need to be ambitious and push to ensure that all our casualty statistics are on a downward trend. As colleagues have said, there is no room for complacency.
The road safety framework to 2020 has served us well. As we have heard tonight, the framework has resulted in a strong partnership approach to the delivery of many road safety strategies and initiatives. That would not have been achieved without the drive and determination of all our stakeholders—Brake, ROSPA, and indeed NOSDAT, to which David Stewart referred—working together to make a positive impact on casualty reduction. However, as we enter the final year of the framework, it is really important that we continue to work together as, collectively, we make the final push to meet all of our 2020 road casualty reduction targets.
I believe that the Transport (Scotland) Bill, which recently passed stage 3, will help to make Scotland’s transport network cleaner, smarter and more accessible for Scotland’s citizens and visitors alike. The new laws on footway parking should make our streets safer for pedestrians, and low-emission zones will improve air quality and health for walking and cycling. Both contribute to road safety week’s “Step up for safe streets” theme, which colleagues have referenced. How we manage speed and emissions on Scotland’s roads could also have its part to play in addressing our climate emergency needs.
I will say something about the importance of protecting people who choose to walk and cycle in order to ensure safe and healthy journeys, which this year’s road safety week promotes. Maurice Corry is quite right: we can improve safety by not using our cars as much and undertaking as many journeys as possible through sustainable active travel.
With our climate change and health ambitions, this Government is more committed than ever to our vision that communities are shaped around people, with walking and cycling the most popular choice for shorter everyday journeys. We know that the perception that roads are unsafe is a barrier against walking and cycling for everyday journeys, and that the reduction of traffic speed can be a positive step in making our towns and cities safer places, where people are confident to walk and cycle more often than they do now. For the second year running, we are committing £80 million a year to support local authorities and our partners to deliver ambitious segregated infrastructure that makes our towns and cities friendlier and, more important, safer.
That budget has also supported innovative behavioural change campaigns, including Cycling Scotland’s #GiveCycleSpace campaign and Police Scotland’s operation close pass, to help change behaviours and better safeguard vulnerable road users—whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders or anyone else—in our communities who are clearly put at risk by dangerous driving.
The Government also encourages the introduction of 20mph speed limits in the right environment, because they have real potential to encourage more active travel and increase people’s perceptions of feeling safe. We continue to work with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to help identify more straightforward, efficient and effective procedures for local authorities that want to introduce more 20mph speed limits in the right environment. One example of work that is being undertaken is a review of the traffic regulation order process, which will determine whether that creates a barrier to the implementation of 20mph speed limits.
Solutions will be found through collaborative working between COSLA, which is a key stakeholder in road safety, and the Government. In addition, the recently updated “Scottish Safety Camera Programme: Handbook of Rules and Guidance” introduces the ability to flexibly deploy safety camera resources, which can ensure continued support of improved driver behaviour and speed limit compliance in high-footfall areas, where active travel could be encouraged by lower speeds and reduced risk exposure.
The Government places a strong emphasis on road safety education. Road Safety Scotland—the Government’s principal road safety delivery partner—has developed numerous learning resources and social marketing campaigns aimed at tackling the use of inappropriate speed and other poor behaviours on Scotland’s roads.