HOW many people dying on the roads in Essex every year do you think is acceptable? …….. 5?  20?  42? 
(42 is the actual number of people that died on our roads last year). 

What if some of them were your family, your friends, neighbours, colleagues? 

When you think of it like this, isn’t one person killed one too many? 

Human beings make mistakes, but is it right that, sometimes, even a small mistake means that someone will not be going home?

Today, the Safer Essex Roads Partnership (SERP) is launching Vision Zero. 

Vision Zero is their ambition to have ZERO road deaths and serious injuries on roads in the Essex, Southend and Thurrock council areas by 2040.  

Councillor Lesley Wagland, Chairman of the SERP Governance Board said:

“I completely support Vision Zero, and am urging all leaders of councils, emergency services and businesses, together with the people of Essex, to prevent these unacceptable and avoidable tragedies. 

“As our roads get ever busier, we must not lose sight of what really matters – people’s safety. “I know all our partners are totally committed to achieving

Vision Zero, but it will only succeed if everyone who uses the roads in Essex is prepared to share this vision and work with us to achieve it.”

We are looking forward to working with anyone and everyone who shares our vision of zero deaths and serious injuries on Essex roads. 

If you’d like to know more or want to contribute please contact us at saferessexroads  

We all recognise the enormity of this challenge. 

To get to zero by 2040, we need to halve the current number of deaths and serious injuries by 2030 which we know will involve many changes and will require the commitment of all communities and organisations, as well as each individual road user.  

We feel that the passion behind Vision Zero is captured by the impact of this film from The Transport Accident Commission Victoria (Australia) Towards Zero

We hope you will find it as inspiring as we did.

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Comments

Novoman

Suggest Vision Zero partner up with the road Safety Charity BRAKE could make an effective partnership. 
Also, although it’s frequently the ‘nut’ behind the wheel that might cause accidents many deaths happen because of poor road design and layout,  confusing lane markings that cause drivers to needlessly switch lanes, a plethora of road furniture that’s often duplicated and or redundant(posts, signage etc), poor signage, poor lighting and haphazard speed limits that seem to make no sense. Eg dual carriageways 40 mph and nearby single carriageway 60 mph (as at J7 Hastingwood ) Additionally the speed limit on many small country roads is 60 mph creating the possibility of 120 mph head on collisions. Some roundabouts are incredibly badly designed.  And so on. Many accidents could be avoided by good design, unfortunately we have a piecemeal approach based on the whims of remote designers who clearly have no local knowledge and who seem not to have visited sites. We also have a system that only and only sometimes changes after one or more fatalities instead of being alert to near misses.  Change is needed. Let’s hope you can make a difference.