Road safety minister Jim Fitzpatrick took to the stage for the ‘big interview’ at the Fleet News Managing Risk in Fleet Conference 2009, in Reading. Armed with questions submitted by Fleet News readers, conference chairman Robert Gifford was able to take the Government to task on a range of issues concerning the industry.

Q: For the first time in 2007 road deaths were below 3,000, how much more do you think we can achieve?

A: The figures for 2007 show deaths at 2,946 - the first time under 3,000. That obviously is progress.
We set ourselves targets in 2000 to have deaths down by 40% in adults and 50% for kids by 2010.

We’re at 39% and we should make 40% for adults. We passed the 50% for kids in 2008, but that still means nearly 3,000 people being killed and 30,000 being seriously injured, and that’s supposed to be progress.

We used to have the safest roads in the world and we are now second, hovering with several other countries and want to be the safest again.

In 2008, when fuel prices were up at the sky-high range and car usage was down 10%-11% that would bring the first quarter figures for 2008 down. And the recession for 2009 I think will equally have a little bit of an impact in terms of bringing the figures down.

But I do think the early figures for up to September, 2008, suggest we’ve got something like an 11% reduction in deaths and serious injuries.

If that’s true and the trend goes into 2009 then we could be at about 2,500, but that’s wild speculation.

However, what we want to do over the next 10 years is to have the safest roads in the world.

Q: What’s your take on the role of the company car and van, fleet manager and Driving for Better Business in pushing forward towards your casualty targets, not only for 2010, but the decade after that also?

A: Driving for Better Business and Safed aren’t just about cutting collisions and crashes, they also make good business sense.

The amount of money you can save in fuel economy, the reduction in vehicles being off the road for repairs and therefore staff standing around or having to hire alternative vehicles.

The reduction in insurance premiums for the reduction in the number of crashes and collisions – this is bottom line stuff.

We are saying to business look at all the case studies, look at the companies which have signed up, look at the drivers who have been through the training and the outcomes for company accounts.

But it’s very much a matter of getting that information out there.

We have been trying, but we’ve not had as much success as we had hoped, which is why we went for the Better Business Champions.

It’s going to be much more emphatic coming from business people that it makes sense coming from Driving for Better Business and Safed, rather than the Government saying you ought to do this.

Q: Where do you think the voluntary adoption of Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) fits within the casualty saving potential?

A: Let me first qualify by saying the Government is not going to introduce compulsory ISA.

I’ve been in a car which has got it, I’ve had it demonstrated and to be perfectly frank it’s like any other piece of kit that you have in your car.

If it helps you drive more safely, keeps you under the limits, keeps your concentration levels up, then it has got to be of value.

I was in Nuneaton at the Bosch plant and they were showing me the latest kit called Electronic Stability Control.

The top of the range vehicles that have got electronic stability control achieve a 23% cut in fatalities, simply because of the additional stability it gives vehicles on top of the electronic braking, the assisted speed braking.

Electronic Stability Control makes the car safer and of course with the top of the range models you’ve got all the other safety devices.
ISA will be another tool.

ESC will be in all new cars by 2014 – European regulation – 40% of British cars already have it.

But with better engineering on our roads with ESC, ABS and other technical devices, we can use them to drive these figures down before we even look at reforming the driving test and training youngsters more effectively as drivers before they take to the road.

As well as, enforcement regimes or extra penalties for people who are speeding way, way above the limit they actually ought to be doing, introducing fixed penalty notices for carless driving, because most decent drivers say I want these nutters actually dealt with.

We spent £4 million last year equipping every police force in England and Wales with digital breathalysers and last Christmas we had more people breathalysed than in any other time in history.

It’s been a type approved for evidential purposes which means people won’t have two or three hours to be taken to the police station for a blood test or a urine test because that will be enough to convict them in court and that will give us better data for what’s happening with alcohol, which is still one of the biggest killers.

Q: ESC starts at the top end of the market amongst drivers who probably need it least, whereas our problem is the 17 to 25-year-old male cohort, who will not necessarily benefit.

A: They are training men and women up and down the country to promote ESC, much as they are promoting low emission vehicles as more attractive to younger people than they are.

When most adults are going to help their kid buy their first car ESC is now only between £200 to £500.

If the message gets out how much of an additional safety measure ESC is, even in smaller cars, if I’m a mum or a dad then I’m going to buy that as an option.

In some of the middle range vehicles it is already an option, but in terms of the level of safety it brings for parents and for car buyers it will become a much stronger feature than it is at the moment.

Q: What role do you think fleets have in terms of banning all mobile phones?

A: Several companies have already introduced it. They’ve said we’re not using it because we know it is a distraction – the evidence quite clearly says it is – not as much as a hand held phone because at least you’ve got two hands that might be or ought to be on the wheel.

The difficulty the police would have would be enforcing.

If you see somebody talking in the car they could be talking to themselves, they could be talking to the radio, they could be talking to a kid that’s low down in the back seat and proving they’re on a telephone is difficult.

But the police do have, and we are enforcing the powers of, carless driving.

If somebody’s making a mistake then they can pull them over and they’re going to be more likely to do that in the months and years ahead if the consultation goes as it looks as though it ought to be going.

We’re not coming forward with regulations, certainly not at the moment and we will always base any new regulations on evidence and we haven’t got that evidence.

But based on commonsense, if some companies are adopting these policies then there seems to be a lot in it and I would certainly recommend it to other fleet managers.

Q Are we moving towards a specific fleet driving licence?

A: There are not any plans for that at the moment.
The driving test fundamentally hasn’t changed in around 50 years and all you have to do is demonstrate that you can mechanically manoeuvre the car.

When you actually sit the test, when you’ve entered the vehicle, the examiner says go to the end of the road and turn left, down to the roundabout and turn right and he or she is guiding you round the course.

Instead, they would possibly say take me to Reading railway station or take me to the Madejski, or take me to somewhere they know which is well signposted, because they want to see if you’ve actually got some level of competence, that you can drive the vehicle.

The manoeuvres of reversing round the bend, three-point turns and parking, they can all be done by the instructors.

The instructors, the ADIs (Advanced Driving Instructors) we’re consulting on recertifying them or looking at their competence.

Introducing a pre-driver qualification for 14 to 16-year-olds to teach them how they should actually be behaving in a car if they haven’t been in one before, wearing seatbelts, not distracting the driver, not winding them up, so when they come to start training for their test, they are actually mentally prepared for what’s happening on the road.

We’ll not be saying there will be an upper age limit, but what we will be saying is beef-up the 10-year statement and fit to drive.

We’re saying, perhaps, when people get to retirement age, whether 60/65, when they’re emitted to a free eye test under the NHS, well we’ll double that up as a free eye test for driving.

But, in terms of letting people go from 17 to 70 and never asking them to do a refresher or let’s see if you’re still up to it and for professional drivers with CPC coming in and the rest of it, I think the writing’s on the wall for all of us.

All our jobs are up for renewal every four or five years, whether it’s me with the ballot box, whether it’s your boss checking on your competence, whether it’s a GP having to demonstrate that to the General Medical Council.

I think the world is moving in that direction and we want driving for life.

Q: There is a fairly big debate about the reliability of Stats19 and the disparity between data captured by the police against data captured by the health service and then there’s data captured by the insurance companies. How do you feel that data process is going to inform beyond 2010?

A: We’re doing a review of Stats19 at the moment and that will give us the opportunity to look at the forms that the police use at crash sites and we are looking to reform that and bring out different forms by 2011.

However, there are reasons for different figures being recorded, much of which has to do with insurance claims and people being honest about how they’ve made out reports or may not be recorded by the police but will go to an accident emergency because they need some medical evidence for an insurance claim form.

There’s all kind of anomalies out there.
We’re confident Stats19 is having enough accuracy and enough validity to be the base for which we use at the moment for determining policy in moving forward.

But, nothing is constant and that will be refreshed and will be out here by 2011.

The data is clearly there which shows how many people are being killed by drink driving, how many because of drugs, how many because of speed and how many because of not wearing seatbelts and how many because they’re not taking enough rest breaks.

If we break down the figures then we know that 80% of those who have been killed because of something which is being done – these aren’t accidents.

An accident can happen to anybody. These are conscious decisions to have too much to drink, to not put your seat belt on, to go over the speed limit, to not take a break and then end up being tired.

So these aren’t accidents, these are incidents, these are crashes, these are collisions and I think very strongly that we have to reverse the polarity and say if you have a collision it’s not because it was an accident, necessarily, although tyres do blow out and pot-holes do happen in a road and therefore an accident can be occasioned.

But, then the first question for somebody to ask themselves when they’ve been in a crash is what caused it? Was it me? And take personal responsibility.

Because, if we can get people taking personal responsibility, if we can get that culture back on to the roads of commonsense and decency.

Give the police more powers in terms of enforcement and look after the decent driver and stop the yobs who are making it unpleasant to drive.

If we can deal with them and get decency back on to the roads, that’s got to help and that’s about attitudes and behaviour, but I think it’s also about language… It’s up to us, it’s not about big brother telling you what to do, it’s what we ought to be doing… there is nothing more important than saving lives.