Roads about to get a lot more dangerous

The latest report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies reveals that cuts to roads policing numbers of 27% across England and wales due to austerity are starting to have consequences.

RPU function is obviously not just about dealing with boy racers, and includes some really vital stuff for road safety including the ongoing battle against the dangers of drink driving. The loss in officer numbers equates to decrease in breath tests of 260,681 over the period since 2011.

In many cases it is not the drink driver who ends up suffering significant injury or death due to their actions, and sadly I can only see our roads becoming a more dangerous place as the cuts start to bite.

Stay safe out there.

Indeed all in the (false) name of austerity. Given the almost non-existent police presence on our roads the chances of getting caught are minimal.

Whilst I accept one can believe things are getting 'worse' it strikes me that that is indeed the case on the UK's roads, how many recent multiple fatal collisions have there been this 6 person one today in an apparent 40mph zone, 3 or 4 separate fatal collisions have happened in the area I live in the last week alone

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-42383464

Do things like this help?
#JoinThePact to Never Drink and Drive

If not so much, what could help look like from all of us as "sober" drivers?

I certainly agree with your thoughts- things have been sliding for the past couple of years now. My yardstick for a worsening situation was the increasing number of times my officers or I were having to attend homes to tell the NOK that their loved ones would not be coming home.

I think the vast majority do as much as they can, by observing the laws and helping to make thinks like DD socially unacceptable. Its the small but persistent minority that need to be 'policed' and austerity cuts are definitely affecting the ability to do that.

It’s a difficult question. Call me biased but, for every 1 person that dies on the roads each year, nearly 100 die of cancer.

We are gradually engineering our way to safer roads. Reading between the lines of the pictures from Birmingham, it looks as if a car crossed a central reservation with no barrier. There’s no doubt far more to it than just that. The steady reduction in road deaths from the 50s isn’t because we’ve had more police: roads and cars are much better engineered. We’ve also added cameras (love or hate them) which do modify people’s behaviour (not always for the better).

Conversely, in health I think that there is a more direct relationship between funding and lives saved. My experience of cancer clinics, to draw the example, is that they are woefully under-staffed.

I’m not trying to pick a battle nor draw a direct comparison but it doesn’t matter who is in power, we just don’t have enough money to go around - austerity or not - and we have to find other ways of achieving our goals.

it's been a bad weekend, sadly 2 MET officers are also in a critical condition in hospital having been run over by a drink driver in London earlier this morning

I’m sorry to hear that - no-one deserves that, especially whilst serving the public. I hope they make full recoveries.

We all have our individual perspectives. Being present while 3 young lives ended on the ward has coloured mine without a doubt.

You are spot on re individual perspectives and I also agree it's a multi-faceted problem overall. As I have gotten older I have become more sceptical and disillusioned with those that govern us and the versions of the 'truth' they give on both sides.

I think whilst upsetting and traumatic illness unless caused by third party negligence (or underfunding the NHS) etc is not akin to nor like road traffic casualties; where the negligent and/or criminal actions of others kill and maim innocent road users.

Technology for road traffic enforcement is a help but it is not a panacea for visible police deterrence and education.

Prevention cannot be measured by mandarins nor does it get our supposed representative's elected again so it is cut to the bone as it has been on our roads and neighbourhoods.

Gradually engineering safer roads....I think we struggle to even have a surface that one can safely drive on do we not. Or do we wait until the Coroner reports so many fatal's to the local council that they eventually do something and install a crossing or speed enforcement?

Our communities and services are in meltdown and I am unsure how that can possibly be justified given we look to Govt to provide such.

I also disagree that there is 'not enough money to go around' of course there is enough money, taxation and who those taxes are levied upon is the issue. Given the UK is basically a tax haven for the super rich and those with indigenous wealth have experienced an unprecedented decline in their tax burden.

In published lists of the safest roads in the World, the UK is near the top and many of the other countries on the list are tiny in comparison. We don’t do badly whilst we could always do better and any death is one death too many.

That said, a proportion of road deaths will have contributed to their own demise. Sure, better road surfaces would be good - especially from the perspective of a keen cyclist.

Of course there isn’t enough money to go around. It’s a bottomless pit especially in healthcare. As for being a “tax haven”, that’s why the super-rich go elsewhere to live. Just upping tax just isn’t the answer and it never has been - it’s such a simplistic and naive argument.

One day I was waiting to join the main road where the traffic was moving really slowly. Someone kindly gave me way. I moved forward a bit.

And then something happened that I have not personally seen before or since. Out of nowhere a car came DRIVING REALLY FAST ON THE FCKING PAVEMENT, went past the queue of slow moving traffic and disappeared.

What do you think the expression was on the driver's face? Confusion? Worry? Nervousness? No. They had an open mouth smile. As if they were saying, ''Ha ha! I don't care!''

I was totally dumbfounded, because apart from in the movies, I had never actually ever seen anyone DRIVING REALLY FAST ON THE FCKING PAVEMENT.

Some people spend their whole lives doing everything properly, always doing the right thing, being good people, thinking about others, sometimes putting others so much before themselves that they end up not getting the things in life that they've worked hard for and deserve. And for what? Just so that they can get hurt by selfish people who amongst other selfish things are one day DRIVING REALLY FAST ON THE FCKING PAVEMENT.

It makes you think though doesn't it? What level of selfishness a person has to unlock in life that they can so casually do things like DRIVING REALLY FAST ON THE FCKING PAVEMENT?

I'm quite certain that some people think they are literally in a video game called Grand Theft Auto: Life and that other people are just NPCs who don't matter if they get hurt, if they as the player were to decide one day that they felt like DRIVING REALLY FAST ON THE FCKING PAVEMENT.

I like to think that when that driver got home that day, as soon as they put down their car keys, they suddenly thought to themselves, 'What on earth was I thinking!?!' And then they will have felt bad for potentially hurting someone. They will have decided to become a more considerate and caring person. They will have involved themselves in lots and lots of charity work and become a truly great person. The kind of person that brings out the best in others.

Or maybe they just got another pay rise at work by being a narcissistic, sociopathic go-getter.

I think some people do chance their arm and don't think about the potential outcomes until it's too late. Some people liken a motor vehicle in careless hands to be a weapon which can have devastating consequences. As a young PC many years ago I would have cut my investigative teeth on a report like that, looked for CCTV, spoken to witnesses and hunted the offender down. My reason would have been to show them the error of their ways through prosecution in the belief this would discourage them from doing it again. often progressing a motoring offence would lead to other things, for example the recovery of a loaded firearm in one vehicle I stopped, and a kilo of cannabis resin in the boot of all things a Fiat Coupe! That is where my love affair with the car began, not that I could afford one on my wages back then... Nowadays such reports do not come through for investigation, but usually stay on a massive queue in the TPU until someone decides their just aren't enough staff to investigate or it runs past the statutory time limit of 6 months. sad but true.

The reduction in RPU staff also minimises the chance to disrupt criminals who use vehicles and the road network to carry out their activities, so there is a knock on effect

Driving on the pavement is certainly a risky thing to do nowadays. I would have thought that Police would shoot first ask questions later if faced with a car on the pavement!