Putting road safety on the map

The Road Safety Foundation took top prize at last year's Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards. The charity was recognised for its work developing road risk maps, which identify problem areas across the road network. We found out more from the Foundation's director, Dr Joanne Hill.

What is the Road Safety Foundation?

We're a UK charity that advocates road casualty reduction through simultaneous action on all three components of the safe road system: roads, vehicles and behaviour.

What are your main objectives?

With the upcoming UN Decade of Action for Road Safety on 11 May 2011, the Foundation is committed to stimulating and supporting action to improve road infrastructure so that it is seen as a public health issue. The Foundation aims to ensure that Britain can be a leader in road safety providing best practise to other countries.

You produce road risk maps - how do these work?

They show the distribution of crash risk on Britain's motorways and A roads, raising awareness of how risk changes as users move around. The huge disparity in risk across the network provides a platform for understanding why some roads are safer than others and the solutions available to improve safety on the riskiest routes.

What's been your biggest success?

We established EuroNCAP and EuroRAP, both now worldwide programmes. Several of our published reports have provided the basis of new legislation or government policy on road safety.

Do you work with any other road safety organisations?

The Road Safety Foundation is a founder member of the FIA Foundation and frequently works with other FIA members in Britain and abroad including the RAC Foundation, AA and IAM.

What role can driving instructors play in your work?

Driving instructors play a fundamental role in instilling knowledge of how driving behaviour can increase or decrease risk of a collision in different circumstances. Students who vocalise their actions and decision making during lessons have been shown to be more aware of the risks they face, and particularly the reasons for speed limits and traffi c laws which match driving conditions with road design and layout.

Useful links

Find out more about the Road Safety Foundation at roadsafetyfoundation.org

Download the Foundation's latest report, Saving Lives for Less, at roadsafetyfoundation.org/downloads/RSFreportweb.pdf

To view and download older research and reports, go to roadsafetyfoundation.org/reports.html

For national and regional risk rating maps of motorways and A roads, see eurorap.org/risk_maps