The RAC Foundation, Road Safety Foundation and UK Department for Transport (DfT) have won a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award for the £100 million Safer Roads Fund.
Prince Michael of Kent established the award to recognise achievements which will improve road safety.
The Safer Roads Fund programme focused on treating the 50 highest risk local A road sections in England with remedial road safety engineering interventions.
Together, the Safer Roads Fund schemes are set to prevent around 1,450 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years.
The RAC Foundation says the value of prevention for the schemes is £550m compared with the whole life cost of treatments of £125m.
The benefit to cost ratio for this portfolio of roads is estimated to be 4.4, meaning that for every £1 invested, £4.40 is returned in terms of “societal benefit”.
According to the RAC Foundation, this demonstrates how road safety interventions can compete favourably with other major transport projects.
Prince Micheal of Kent says in a letter to the Road Safety Foundation's executive director Dr Suzy Charman: “I was so pleased when the Westminster Government announced the Safer Roads Fund. The importance of sound investment at local level will provide many long-overdue improvements, not just in the 50 most dangerous stretches of ‘A’ roads in England, but elsewhere too. The innovative approach which the fund has triggered by bringing new methodologies to so many local authorities is indeed a step-change in practice and a huge stimulus to deploying a Safe Systems approaches by many roads authorities.”
The Safer Roads Fund follows a successful pathfinder programme delivered by Road Safety Foundation and commissioned and financially supported by the RAC Foundation and the DfT.
Chapman says: “We share this award with the RAC Foundation whose initial support allowed us to undertake the pathfinder project that was a catalyst to the Safer Roads Fund, and of course we also share the award with our local authority partners who worked hard to design and implement their schemes.”
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, says: “The pathfinder and wider Department for Transport project together represent a significant step change in practice in supporting local authorities to apply a new proactive safe systems approach to risk management on exceptionally high-risk routes. The tools and guidance developed by this project will undoubtedly benefit countries beyond the UK."
