As well as helping educate your community about the importance of taking care on roads, you may feel your community needs a particular road safety measure, for example a lower speed limit or crossing.

Talking to a Highway Engineer

Most ‘B’ roads and all ‘C’ roads and unclassified roads, and a few ‘A’ roads are the responsibility of your Local Authority’s highway engineer, who usually works in the Highways Department. Highway engineers work to make roads safer by assessing existing road safety measures on roads and deciding whether more, or different ones, are needed. If you have trouble tracking them down, call your council’s Road Safety Unit.

Trunk roads (motorways and most A-roads) are the responsibility of The Highways Agency. The name of The Highways Agency’s area or route manager for your region can be found on the agency’s website at: www.highways.gov.uk or write to The Information Line, Highways Agency, Room 13/16, St. Christopher House, Southwark Street, London SE1 0TE

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, responsibility for the trunk network lies with ministers in the Scottish Executive (Tel: 0131 244 0763) the Welsh Assembly (Tel: 02920 825111) and the Department of the Environment (Tel: 02890 540540).

Will they do what I want?

Road safety measures are usually implemented by the highway engineer if they meet criteria laid down in national guidance documents by the Department for Transport. However, different Local Authorities take different approaches and prioritise different road safety measures at different times. Highway engineers work towards achieving Local Transport Plans (LTPs). LTPs are set for five-year periods and stipulate how much money can be spent and on what measures. You can ask your council for a copy of its LTP. You can also ask them for a copy of any national guidance document they quote from.

Local authorities have a limited amount of money to spend. Sometimes a road safety measure is not possible because the council says they cannot afford it in their current budget. It may have to wait until the next ‘budget round’ and your campaign may take longer. But keep going!

Keep talking

You should involve your highway engineer in your road safety group or committee. Also, s/he should involve you if they are planning significant road safety measures. While your highway engineer has responsibility for roads near you, they may not live near them nor be fully aware of local concerns, so should appreciate your involvement.

Tips to help you effectively communicate with your highway engineer:

• Understand your problem, but be prepared to listen and learn; an engineering measure that you initially thought might be the solution, might not be the best one.
• If you don’t understand, ask! Ask for copies of guidance documents that your highway engineer quotes, and check they are using the most up to date ones! 9see below)
• As well as involving your highway engineer in your group’s meetings, you could also correspond by email, phone and letter. That way, you will be able to formally exchange views and information and pass on findings to others in your group.
• Keep talking - campaigns succeed where there is mutual understanding and persistence, based on facts and wide support.

It helps enormously if you read the same official road safety guidance that your Local Authority is reading. Don’t be afraid to ask your Local Authority which guideline they are following, and to ask for a copy of it, and to ask whether they are sure it is the most uptodate one! If in doubt, go to the Department for Transport website and look it up yourself.

Working together: Research proves it works

Traffic-calming schemes are most successful when local people are fully involved, according to a study by The Scottish Executive Central Research Unit. The study which you can donwload at www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/resfinds recommends that councils involve community groups when designing traffic-calming measures.

Getting a result

Sometimes communities get exactly what they ask for, and quickly. Sometimes this doesn’t happen. For example, your group may want a lower speed limit but your highway engineer may say ‘no’ and offer, instead, a sign asking drivers to ‘slow down’. S/he may suggest an alternative such as this without being prompted. If not, and your request has been turned down, ask what your highway engineer is able to do.

An alternative road safety measure may work just as well as your original suggestion. However, if a suggestion you make is turned down, you have a right to know why. Sometimes alternative measures are implemented because they are cheaper and easier, not because they are going to be as effective. Invite the safety engineer to speak to your group to explain the reasons and answer questions. If an alternative measure doesn’t seem to work, you can keep pushing for your original suggestion or a revised form of it. Your highway engineer will have to reconsider your request for help, particularly if you have growing support from local people and from local politicians or media. Your group could canvas local opinion again by carrying out another questionnaire, or more research. If your suggestion failed to meet a particular criteria set by your council, your local MP or councillor could ask, on your behalf, for that criteria to be changed.

If an important road safety measure is turned down because of a lack of funds, keep fighting! Tell people and officials that each death on the road is estimated to cost more than £1million (in costs to the emergency services and society). Therefore, investing in road safety saves money in the long-run. Your highway engineer may be prepared to implement a road safety measure if your community raises the funds to pay for all or part of its cost. You should seek agreement from the highway engineer that a proposed measure can be implemented before fundraising, but if you have this agreement, local big businesses might help.

If an important road safety measure is turned down because no-one has died, keep fighting! Tell people and officials that ‘risk audits’ are conducted on the basis of current risk to life due to live and present hazards, not on the chance circumstance of whether someone has actually died as yet. Your community is, in effect, being told that a life or lives must be sacrificed before something will be done. This is not acceptable, humane, nor civilized.

Talk to your MP

Don’t stop talking to your highway engineer, even if you don’t get what you want! However, you may need to raise your concerns with your Member of Parliament and local councillors. Your MP will be able to discuss your concerns with a representative of your group face-to-face at their local ‘surgery’ (usually on a Friday), or you could ask him/her to attend one of your meetings or come for a ‘walk about’ with you to see the problems for themselves. If your MP agrees with your point of view, they may then be able to raise your concerns at both a local and a national level with the council, in parliament, or by talking to the relevant Minister and civil servants. To find out the name of your MP, call 0207 219 4272 between 10am and 4pm. You can write to your MP at House of Commons, London SW1A OAA.