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CHAPTER NINE: SUMMARY
CONCLUSIONS
9.1 A wide range of organisations and individuals responded to this consultation. Across these responses, the central themes of education, enforcement and engineering emerged as priorities. Furthermore, the consultation responses highlight the need for the new Scottish Road Safety Strategy to address these 3 themes in conjunction with each other.
9.2 Alongside these 3 central themes, a number of issues emerged as priorities and these included young drivers, speed limits, the reduction of casualties, rural roads and drink-driving.
9.3 While the consultation responses highlighted a wide range of issues to be addressed in the Strategy, there were concerns over how the implementation of these would be funded. The general consensus from consultees was that the Scottish Government needs to show its commitment to road safety by providing/administering funding for road safety. There were, however, concerns that the removal of ring-fencing will lead to difficulties in the allocation of road safety funding across Scotland by local authorities.
9.4 While there were acknowledgements that Scotland can learn from other countries' road safety initiatives, there were also some concerns that each country is different in its terrain/traffic volumes and that some solutions may not suit Scotland.
COMMENTS ON THE CONSULTATION PROCESS
9.5 Some organisations valued the work of the consultation process whilst stressing the problems and issues outlined by the document itself; for example, "casualties amongst certain types of road user have not fallen as much as would have been hoped and, in some cases, have actually increased". Other groups felt that the entire consultation process would benefit from increased detail and clarity, suggesting that more detail could be provided on how road safety can impact across all 5 strategic objectives.
9.6 Most comments on the consultation process were either positive or expressed comparatively light criticism about the focus of the process. One organisation echoed others in sharing "the Scottish Government's commitment to making the roads safer... and addressing areas of concern". Others praised it "as a detailed reference document demonstrating the commitment of the Scottish Government to improving road safety." Others felt it to be worthwhile, even if the Scottish Government itself was not fully empowered to enact all aspects of the Consultation.
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