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Concentrate on the real road dangers
Page 28
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THE GOVERNMENT'S recent decision to review road traffic offences is long overdue. Despite repeated assurances that laws would be changed to take more account of the victim, there have been few signs so far of this change occurring.
Too many so-called road safety laws judge road users' behaviour on the outcome of a specific incident rather than the underlying cause.
Yet politicians continue to concentrate on setting targets for prosecutions for bad driving based on spurious evidence.
Prosecutions which involve quantitative values —exceeding speed limits,misusing mobile phones, too high a blood alcohol concentration — can virtually be guaranteed to secure a conviction; yet the real potential dangers arising from such actions as tail-gating, lack of anticipation,poor concentration and behavioural defects are ignored.
Effort currently being directed at securing more prosecutions for corporate manslaughter would be far better spent on education, and changing attitudes to remove the root cause before lives are lost.
Anthony G Phillips Salisbury