5. ENGENDER COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FOR SAFER ROADS
Involve Local Communities In This Enlightened Approach To Road Safety

By supporting ‘Mind Driving’ courses within local community education provision and acquainting people with crash maps and causation data, healthy local interest can be generated, leading to a national culture of safer driving in partnership with the police.

• The purpose of this reform is to encourage and empower local people to take an active interest in making the roads safer in their area through a variety of initiatives led by roads safety champions who emerge from within the community. These initiatives are to be supported by the community road traffic officer(s) drawing upon information and resources available through the local authority.
  
  
• Once it is understood that all accidents occur as a result of drivers getting speed, surprise and space out of balance, local people and groups should be given access to crash analyses at every location where they have occurred so that  learning can be shared in order to prevent future crashes. It is astounding that such information is not routinely available to people and communities at present.
  
  
• Most communities are likely to have a number of locations at higher risk of crashes as well as a number of drivers who are at higher risk of causing them. . Working with hard information, the standard protocol for addressing these issues is known as the ‘Three E’s of Road Safety’ namely: Engineering, Education and Enforcement. It was always intended that enforcement was to be use as a last resort but unfortunately with the growing reliance on technology, enforcement now seems to be used as the first and often only resort, with engineering and education being largely neglected. Reform 5 seeks to address this.
  
  
• It would be wrong to specify the initiatives that communities could initiate; better that communities come up with their own. The foundation however is that the  community road traffic officer should have a good working knowledge of every driver in the area who might pose a risk on the roads because of, for example,  they drive whilst disqualified or under the influence of drink or drugs etc. All drivers including young and novice drivers should be dealt with within the framework provided by the 1947 Road Safety Commission set out in Reform 1
  
  
• Beyond this communities might come up with initiatives that might include, for example, teaching the Risk Model in 6^th forms, night school classes and summer schools running throughout the year, engaging local driving instructors and advanced driving organisations to offer driving assessments and new driver mentoring, and negotiating community discounts with insurers to recognise and reinforce continued for good driving per the Risk Model.
  
  
• The ultimate aspiration of this reform would be to create a national culture of safe drivers community by community in which peer example rather than law enforcement encourages people to drive safely and not let their community down