Overview
Overview
Scotland's Road Safety Framework (RSF), published on 15 June 2009, includes distinct and challenging targets for reductions in road casualties by 2020. These are the first ever Scottish road safety targets: 40% reduction in fatalities; 55% reduction in serious injuries; 50% reduction in children killed and 65% reduction in children seriously injured based on a 2004-2008 average.
Crucially, the Framework is a collaborative document supported by partners in road safety across Scotland including local authorities, the Fire and Rescue Service and Police Scotland.
Leadership and Governance
The Framework is governed by the Road Safety Strategic Partnership Board (SPB) which is responsible for collective decisions on strategic approaches, high level problems and issues, and public ownership of the Framework and its delivery. Members are expected to make key decisions on behalf of their respective organisations and to ensure that these are followed through.
The work of the SPB is supported by partners at operational level in road safety. This Operational Partnership Group (OPG) is made up of operational and policy experts in road safety and related fields such as education, engineering and enforcement. It reports on good practice in road safety in Scotland and beyond, and advises on what works in road safety based on members' research, experience and knowledge.
Useful links:
Scotland's Road Safety Framework
Road Safety Strategic Partnership Board
The Board met in February 2013, in addition to a joint planning meeting with the OPG which took place in September of that year. The Minutes of all meetings can be found on the road safety section of the Transport Scotland website.
Communication and Sharing
Good Practice
The Innovation Fund was launched in April 2012. It was intended to encourage new thinking in road safety and continued through 2013. This Fund makes available small amounts of money to part-fund local road safety pilot projects that fit with Framework priorities and have the potential to be of value at a national level. The Fund also allows us to support larger interventions, such as Cycling Scotland's "Mutual Respect" road safety campaign, which ran from July to September 2013. However, in line with our commitment to intelligence-led road safety targeting, there is an emphasis on evaluation and information sharing.
Evidence
Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government's Community Safety Unit have jointly put in place an Evaluation Framework contract, which allows us to offer evaluation training support for external partners. This work also seeks to facilitate skills transfer, so that those who receive this training and support are encouraged to pass these evaluation skills on to others. We want to encourage our partners to evaluate the work that they do. Projects supported this year included Argyll & Bute Council's evaluation of the "iCycle" cycle training programme developed for its primary schools. We commissioned CHRE to undertake this project, and she supported June Graham and Kay McGhee of Argyll & Bute's Road Safety Team through the evaluation process, assisted by her colleague Linda McKie. This seems to have been a very positive experience for both of them; June Graham commented:
"Kay and I would like to thank you very much for funding this and for the opportunity to learn the evaluation process. We have both picked up lots of tips and hints from Isobel and her team and feel that we are much better placed for the future should we need to evaluate again. We were surprised at how much information we had already gathered from our schools but were just not sure how best to use it. The training taught us to look at exactly what we wanted to know and the best way to ask these questions."
Intelligence
We renewed the MAST licence in spring 2013 for a further year, and we have also now arranged for Scottish data to be supplied directly to Road Safety Analysis, who run the MAST database, in order to ensure the consistency and accuracy of the Scottish data that MAST uses. MAST Scotland has now been launched.
1,974 People were seriously injured in 2012
24% Below the 2004-08 average
MAST is an online road safety data resource. It encompasses several useful datasets into one easily accessible and usable system. The feedback we've received indicates that our partners find this system useful in planning their road safety work:
"I had an exercise to do comparing loss of control accidents across Scotland to Moray. It would have been a very much longer and more complicated analysis if I had not had MAST to use. I have also used it to find out where across Scotland drivers from Moray are having accidents to target future road safety education." - Elaine Penny, Engineer (Traffic), The Moray Council
"I find MAST to be a useful additional analytical tool, especially when comparative data is required for particular behaviours. I find it is also very useful for comparing accident rates on cross boundary routes, to see if neighbouring LAs' strategies have advantages over my own." - Stuart Geddes, Road Safety Engineer, Stirling Council