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Road Safety - By Accident or Design? GUIDELINES FOR IMPROVING ROAD SAFETY IN REGENERATION AREAS
1. Road Safety by accident or design
Road safety in regeneration areas
Research carried out for the Scottish Executive highlighted the higher incidence rate of child road accidents in deprived or disadvantaged areas of Scotland 1. This finding was mirrored in research carried out for Lothian Regional Council that demonstrated a clear link between involvement in accidents as a casualty and indexes of social deprivation. Table 1.1 shows per capita casualty rates for Lothian Region (1990-94) which indicate that children aged between 10 and 17 living in more deprived areas are three times more likely to be injured in a road accident than people living in affluent areas. These data which are aggregated to deprivation category (depcat) mask an eight-fold difference between the most deprived and most affluent areas defined by postcode sector.
Table 1.1: Observed Casualty Rates 2 for Casualties in the 10-17 Age Group by Depcat 3 for Lothian Region (1990-94)
Casualty Sex | Casualty Rates by Depcat |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
All | 3.76 | 4.27 | 5.67 | 5.73 | 6.93 | 8.83 | 10.93 |
Male | 3.99 | 4.95 | 6.39 | 7.40 | 7.97 | 11.79 | 14.47 |
Female | 3.56 | 3.89 | 4.84 | 4.54 | 5.18 | 5.68 | 7.44 |
The improvement of road safety can play an integral role in achieving many of the social inclusion, accessibility and community safety objectives set out for the regeneration of Scotland's most disadvantaged communities. Each of the 34 area based Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs) in Scotland are striving to meet an array of objectives that together will improve the quality of life of the communities that live within them.
There are examples of significant road safety activity in SIP areas with many examples of good practice with strong local community involvement. These examples present an inter-agency approach to tackling road safety, recognising that it is a multi-faceted issue, of importance to a broad spectrum of agencies and individuals.
There is also evidence that many authorities require to adopt a more formal strategy to target improvements to road safety in regeneration areas. Many areas continue to base road safety promotion on national programmes, often overlooking the opportunity to develop promotions and projects based on the needs of the local community and agencies.
The different agencies and key stakeholders engaged in community regeneration within Scotland currently do not have guidance available to them on how best to interact to promote road safety. Consequently there is potential for community regeneration schemes to be developed and implemented without road safety being properly considered.
Excellence in road safety practice and public realm design is indivisible. A project which fails to recognise good road safety is a failed project.
Purpose of the guidelines
It was therefore decided that a set of guidelines should be produced for use by all the agencies and stakeholders engaged in community regeneration that give guidance on how best to approach road safety in regeneration areas using an inter-agency, community based approach.
The guidelines promote the need to tackle road safety issues in regeneration areas within the wider context of community safety. They recognise road safety as a component of community safety.
Agencies involved in community regeneration should refer to these guidelines, so that they can quickly identify the main road safety and community safety issues, sustainable solutions, the relevant agencies that should be involved and how best to incorporate and deliver road safety as part of their regeneration project.
The guidelines are intended to be used to promote community safety across the spectrum of activities within regeneration areas, ranging from small, discrete road safety projects to the large scale masterplanning of the regeneration of an area.
The key purpose of the guidelines is to secure best road and community safety practice in the design of regeneration projects. They recognise the need for an inter-agency approach to this work which can inevitably generate some competing priorities which have to be solved by the planning process.
The guidelines are designed to take the user through the process of using an inter-agency approach to identify road safety problems in regeneration areas, and develop appropriate solutions for them. The guidelines are not intended as a rigid rule-book but as a source of information and support in achieving successful inter-agency working.
Background research
To inform the guidelines, an extensive desk top review of road safety activity in Scotland's SIP areas was undertaken 4. Four specific road safety initiatives within four different SIP areas were selected to present as case studies of best practice in their use of an interagency approach. The case study areas selected were as follows:
- Craigmillar, Edinburgh
- Drumchapel, Glasgow
- Greater Easterhouse, Glasgow
- Cambuslang and Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire
The selection of case study areas was based on ensuring as broad a spectrum of regeneration areas in Scotland as possible, balanced with the need to present detailed case studies of good practice in an inter-agency approach to road safety. The case studies do not represent an exhaustive list of examples of good practice, but offer a variety of different approaches to different road safety problems.
The case studies focused on a specific road safety project or the integration of road safety into the regeneration of the areas. They provide detail on the road safety features and initiatives that have been implemented, the partners involved, how the initiatives were funded and managed, and the recommendations identified as pertinent for inclusion in these guidelines.
Similar research was also carried out to provide an overview of some of the road safety activity within European regeneration areas. The main lesson that was revealed by this research was in relation to funding conditions. The agencies providing the funding for regeneration projects made it a funding condition that evidence was presented to them on how road safety was being considered and how the relevant agencies are interacting to deliver good road safety initiatives.
Structure of the guidelines
Chapter 2 of this document sets out the aims and objectives of the guidelines. In Chapter 3 the key stakeholders and agencies involved within regeneration are identified. Chapter 4 discusses the key aspects of good practice in developing an inter-agency approach to road safety. The road safety issues relevant to regeneration areas are identified in Chapter 5. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses appropriate sustainable solutions.
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