News: Brighton and Hove City Council leader Jason Kitcat talks road safety

National Road Safety Week, organised by the charity Brake, is an opportunity to reflect on the impact of road crashes on the lives of hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

This year’s theme is ‘Look Out For Each Other’, with campaigners trying to challenge the sometimes antagonistic atmosphere between people in cars, buses, bikes and on foot competing with each other for space, speed and priority.

Brake points out that regardless of how we chose to travel, we are really just people trying to get about our business. They also argue that streets should be a place where everyone looks out for each other – especially the most vulnerable.

Safety on Brighton and Hove roads has been improving in recent years. Last year saw 200 fewer people injured or killed in collisions on our streets than in 2010, with local hospital surgeons commenting on the decrease in severity of injuries.

This is the result of our policies to make our streets safer. Research has shown that for every 1mph reduction in average speeds, crash rates fall by 5%. So we’ve slowed traffic on many of our residential and shopping streets through introducing 20mph speed limits and traffic calming measures.

We’ve also redesigned some of our most dangerous roads, junctions and crossings – Seven Dials, Old Shoreham Road, Lewes Road, East Street – to make them more people-friendly and safer. Similar work is underway on the Vogue Gyratory and Edward Street too.

Making physical changes helps make streets safer, but it’s up to people travelling around the city to look out for each other. This National Road Safety Week we’re supporting calls for people to look longer and taking it slow at junctions and bends, and giving others plenty of room – especially as the nights close in. Only by putting safety first and being considerate to one another will the numbers of people hurt on our streets continue to fall.