Strategic approach by all relevant Government Departments

Presentation by Brigitte Chaudhry at 21 April Lobby Meeting

RoadPeace was pioneering in setting up its charity and helpline in early 1992 and pioneering with the launch of their justice campaign in 1998 and in it their call for a strategic/partnership approach between related government departments.
Quote: "RoadPeace demands a unified government strategy to tackle this major public health and human rights issue" - "Why cannot the Department of Health, Environment, Transport and the Regions, Social Security, Education and Employment and the Home Office act in PARTNERSHIP and stop passing the problem between them?"

Last week, on 14th and 15th April, I attended both the General Assembly Meeting and a Stakeholders' Forum at the United Nation in New York, when a resolution was passed to make the WHO the coordinating body to address this public health epidemic, which was described by the Deputy General Secretary as "strangely off the radar screen in public policy".

At a seminar last September, to which the WHO invited Advocacy NGOs, my colleagues from other countries and I for the UK were urged to put pressure on our respective governments to view road death and injury as a national, as well as international disaster.

Today we invited the following Ministers: Paul Boateng, Patricia Hewitt, Andrew Smith, Mike O'Brien, Denis McShane, Baroness Symons, Rosie Winterton, Dr Stephen Ladyman, Hilary Benn, Stephen Twigg, David Jamieson - representing the various Departments relevant to our issues, and also the Prime Minister.

Most are neither here nor represented, and we fear that they do not see any relevance to road danger or road victim issues in their work, even though we clearly pointed it out in our letter. We will await their written responses.

There also may be the lack of political will for collaboration, which Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, mentioned in his recent report. RoadPeace had recently, what we believed to be a very positive meeting at the Department for Transport, which was followed, contrary to all the official rhetoric on joint-up Government, stakeholder partnerships and user involvement, etc., by a very disappointing and dismissive letter.
Quote from letter: "I have checked the position as regards funding of RoadPeace projects, which is that DfT's responsibility is for road safety...the Home Office is responsible for addressing the needs of those affected by collisions...For the same reason, the Road Safety Strategy deals with the Government policies for dealing with the root problem, but does not seek to go beyond that point"...
I expect that this an implied response to our proposal at the meeting that RoadPeace should represent road victims at the DfT's Road Safety Panel, since road victims - as the unfortunate by-product of road safety failure - should very much be part of the debate. We will have to continue pursuing this.

The lack of cooperation between departments, appreciation of the terrible trauma we are dealing with and of basic responsibilities vs human rights legislation is also apparent in the requirement by the DfT for at least four deaths or serious injuries to have to occur at a location within three years before a speed camera can be erected. In which other sphere of life is there such a shocking requirement for human sacrifices?

We still have a long way to go, but there seems to be a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel with the highlighting of our issues by the WHO and UN. I would like to end with the quote by Kofi Annan from his recent report on the Global Road Safety Crisis:
"To date, road safety has received insufficient attention at international and national levels. This has resulted in part from a lack of information on the magnitude of the problem and its preventability, a fatalistic approach to road crashes and a lack of the political responsibility and multidisciplinary collaboration needed to tackle it effectively."