Skip to main content
ParkingRoad Safety

Road Safety and Pavement Parking Submissions

By 19th May 2019No Comments

The ABD has submitted written evidence to the House of Commons Transport Committee’s inquiry into road safety. We stress the need for a new road safety strategy to address the real causes of accidents, which are mostly failures of observation and judgement. Almost two-thirds of accidents are due to these failures, compared with 5 per cent involving speeding.

We call for a return to sensibly set speed limits, and outlawing speed enforcement operations financed from the fees paid by drivers for awareness courses. We want to see adequate funding for the reinstatement of police traffic patrols to discourage reckless behaviour, and education programmes to tackle the most common road user errors. Transport policies should be changed to encourage cooperation and courtesy between all road users, instead of alienating them from one another.

Our full submission can be read here: https://tinyurl.com/yybsugtu

The ABD has also submitted evidence to the same Commons Committee on Pavement Parking. Our submission recognises that thoughtless pavement parking can be selfish and dangerous, but points out that in certain cases can be helpful. Blanket banning, rigidly enforced, would cause hardship and might be impractical.

Our recommendation is to keep the law as it is, but make it simpler for local authorities to make individual bans and enforce them where necessary or to provide partial pavement parking where requested by residents (as is done in London where there is otherwise a ban).

Our full submission can be read here: https://tinyurl.com/yxhb2v66

Note that these responses to consultations and inquiries show how much effort ABD directors and members (in this case Ian Taylor and Malcolm Heymer) put into promoting the interests of our members. Without the ABD your views would not be represented and the anti-car campaigners would be the only voice that is heard. Responding on these and other consultations takes an enormous amount of effort so please recognise this by supporting the ABD with a donation. Go here to do so: https://www.freedomfordrivers.org/donate.htm

Leave a Reply