| July 2010 |
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| Safety alert as motorway lights go off at midnight - Motorway lights are being switched off between midnight and 5am across the country, raising safety concerns. The Highways Agency said the move will save money and cut carbon emissions; but road safety campaigners warned that accidents are more common on unlit roads. (Nationals) |
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| Trainees at wheel - Tens of thousands of learner drivers do not know that they are being taught by a trainee instructor at driving schools, according to the AA. (D Telegraph) |
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| Speeding drivers put into detention - Motorists caught speeding past a school were offered a choice: take a £60 fine and three points on your licence or go straight into class and answer to pupils. When police pulled over 20 drivers, they all opted to face the primary school children as part of the council-run trial in Knowsley. (D Telegraph) |
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| Sport radio “as risky to drivers as drinking” - Listening to sport on the radio affects drivers more than being drunk at the wheel, research by the Transport Research Laboratory shows. The danger increases if the driver has an emotional or financial attachment to the result. In these cases, motorists’ reaction times are 20 per cent slower than normal. If travelling at 70mph, this distraction would add six metres to a car’s stopping distance - 10 per cent further than the additional stopping distance needed when driving with blood alcohol levels at the legal limit. (D Mail) |
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| Black box” for car accidents - Aircraft-style black box technology is being developed for cars in order to record video footage and information about accidents for police and insurance companies. (D Telegraph) |
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| End of the road for Italy’s over-80s? - Italy is considering banning drivers over the age of 80 in a bit to reduce the number of accidents. The country has one of the highest rates of road accident mortality in Europe with more than 5,000 deaths recorded last year. The proposal is based on the suggestion that the elderly are more easily distracted than younger motorists. (D Telegraph / D Mail) |
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| June 2010 |
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| Test driving of over-70s, says Stirling Moss - Motor racing legend Stirling Moss has called for drivers to face regular competence tests above the age of 70. Moss, who continues to race cars at the age of 80, made the comments after an RAC survey showed that most drivers (61 per cent) supported compulsory driving evaluations at 70. (Times) |
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| Road deaths fall 12 per cent in a year to a new low - The number of deaths on Britain’s roads fell by 12 per cent last year to 2,222, the lowest since records began in 1926. Child deaths dropped sharply from 124 in 2008 to 81 in 2009. (Times/Independent) |
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| Commuters will suffer as cuts derail investment - Transport spending cuts could mean that public transport provision will suffer. Stephen Joseph, of the Campaign for Better Transport, warned that 25 per cent cuts would also squeeze the budget of vital road safety and maintenance projects. (D Telegraph) |
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| 200 of your car trips are on record – Details of 200 car journeys for every motorist in Britain are stored on the Government’s vehicle surveillance database. The records, which include photographs of cars, can be handed to the governments of other European countries or America. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that 7.6billion entries are stored on the police automatic number plate recognition database. (D Telegraph) |
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| Deadliest road revealed - The A573 between Macclesfield and Buxton is the most dangerous road in England, according to the Road Safety Foundation. The charity also said that half of all fatal road crashes occur on just one-tenth of Britain’s roads. Its report, covering 28,000 miles of A-roads and motorways, concluded that Scotland has the highest-risk highways, followed by parts of northern England. (Nationals) |
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| How to get a grip on those tyres – From November 2012, a stringent new European labelling system will reveal the environmental and safety standards of car tyres. Experts are now debating how this will affect consumer choices. (The Guardian) |
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| Campaigners throw new light on benefits of an extra hour - Changing the clocks to give another hour of daylight throughout the year would save the same amount of energy as taking 200,000 cars off the road, according to a Cambridge University study. RoSPA says that lighter evenings could also reduce road deaths by around 80 per year and serious injuries by around 212. (Guardian / D Telegraph) |
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| Call for cut in drink-drive limit “to be rejected” - Ministers have showed little sign of endorsing Sir Peter North’s review of drink and drug driving laws. Senior Conservative figures said it was unlikely that the Government would take up proposals put forward by their predecessors. RoSPA urged the Government to implement the recommendations as soon as possible. (Nationals) |
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| Learners to navigate for themselves – A new element to the driving test, to be introduced in the autumn, will see learner drivers having to get themselves to a location 10 minutes away by remembering directions or following signs. It is thought that the test pass rate could drop massively. (Independent, D Express) |
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| April 2010 |
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| Bus driver faces sack after he was filmed “reading book at the wheel” – A bus driver is facing dismissal after he was filmed apparently reading a book at the wheel. National Express West Midlands said the employee had been suspended after footage of the incident - taken by a passenger - appeared on the internet. RoSPA said it was totally irresponsible to put the lives of so many at risk by reading at the wheel. (BBC News website / Independent / Birmingham Post) |
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Old drivers “are safest” – Making older motorists retake the driving test would do little to prevent accidents as they are among the safest drivers, according to a report by the RAC Foundation. It found that many young drivers are more dangerous. Giving older people better advice on their fitness to drive and making road signs easier to read would help to keep older people mobile for as long as they are safe to do so. (D Express)
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| Older bikers are more likely to die – Motorcyclists are getting older – and the older they get the more likely they are to die in an accident, an American study has found. Half of all motorcyclists needing emergency treatment in 2005 were over 40, double the number in 1993. Accidents involving riders in that age group were twice as likely to be fatal as those involving younger riders, according to the findings in the American Surgeon journal. (D Express) |
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| Crisps...the danger food for drivers – Crisps have been revealed as the most dangerous food to eat while driving. A study by i-kube, makers of a curfew device for young drivers, found that one in 20 motorists have had an accident or a near-miss while eating at the wheel. Unwrapping food or opening bottles caused one in ten to crash or come close to it. (D Express) |
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| End of road for pedalling postmen – Royal Mail plan to phase out its 24,000 red bicycles and replace them with vans because of the “safety risk”. Energy minister Lord Hunt said the main reason for the action was to improve efficiency. (D Express) |
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| Hands-free phones “as risky as drink driving” – Drivers having a conversation on a hands-free mobile phone could be as dangerous as those who are drunk behind the wheel, scientists believe. Researchers at the University of Utah found that motorists using the legal devices took almost a fifth longer to hit the brakes in an emergency and were shown to be less aware of traffic around them. (D Mail) |
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| March 2010 |
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| Lollipop ladies will film bad drivers – Lollipop ladies are to be equipped with CCTV cameras mounted on their sticks to catch reckless drivers. The women launched a campaign after becoming concerned at motorists jumping red lights, talking on their mobile phones or drinking coffee while driving near two schools in Greater Manchester. (D Telegraph) |
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| A brave new dawn – Improvements in road safety are being pushed as one of the strongest arguments for adopting the single double summer time system. Research done on behalf of the Department for Transport has suggested that extra daylight later in the day will each year save around 80 lives and prevent more than 200 serious injuries. RoSPA said that rush-hour accidents in Scotland would fall by 17 per cent, six per cent more than the fall in England and Wales. (The Independent / The Guardian) |
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| January 2010 |
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| Roads report: Only half of the motorways in England reach the top safety rating – and other major roads are much worse – according to the Road Safety Foundation’s annual report. The study, which evaluates roads with a star rating system, said that structural issues mean that many routes do not protect drivers who run off roads. (BBC News Website) |
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| “Most” back limit cut: A poll commissioned by the Scottish Government suggests that four out of five people in the country would back a reduction in the drink-drive limit. (BBC News Website) |
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| Congestion failures: Schemes aimed at easing congestion have succeeded only in creating rat-runs and an increase in speeding, according to the Highways Agency. The agency conducted an official evaluation into four bypass schemes. (Telegraph) |
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| Road train trials: “Road trains”, where a convoy of cars are “driven” automatically by a single lead vehicle, are to be trialled in the UK. The system, which links cars together with “electronic shackles”, would apparently allow drivers in the convoy to sit back and relax while the lead vehicle does all the hard work, saving fuel and allegedly improving safety. (Independent) |
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| December 2009 |
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| More mobile use: A study by the Transport Research Laboratory suggests that more people are using their mobile phones behind the wheel now than were before tougher penalties were introduced two years ago. (Nationals) |
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| Lower limit’s good: Research published in the British Medical Journal suggests 20mph zones reduce road injuries by more than 40 per cent. The study found that benefits of the zones were most marked in children and cyclists. RoSPA said the study validated its long-held support for the expansion of the zones. (Nationals) |
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| September 2009 |
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| Road casualties out – Two thirds of road crash casualties were not recorded by the Government last year, the latest Department for Transport report reveals. The Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2008 report concedes that figures provided by police may underestimate the number of casualties. RoSPA said the report, which revealed speed played a part in 41per cent of deaths of young male drivers, showed speeding was still a problem. (Telegraph and various) |
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| Satnav fine - A professional driver is believed to be one of the first people in the UK to be convicted of driving without due care and attention for following his satnav blindly. The man’s car ended up teetering on the edge of a cliff when he drove up a narrow bridle path in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. He was given six penalty points and ordered to pay fines and costs of nearly £900. RoSPA said driving required concentration at all times, and that drivers, not their satnavs, should be the boss. (Nationals) |
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| In-car crash alert call - The UK has been urged to sign up to car accident technology which automatically alerts emergency services after a crash. The European Commission needs all EU member states to sign up to the system, but the UK is one of six countries yet to do so. (Birmingham Post) |
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| Cannabis driver jailed - A lorry driver who had been smoking cannabis before he killed a motorist by driving into her at 60mph in thick fog near Basildon has been jailed for 14 months. The driver pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving after an earlier charge of causing death by careless driving while unfit through drugs was dropped. (Telegraph) |
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| Lorry driver killed by toxic seaweed? – A lorry driver who died when his vehicle careered into a wall after he collapsed at the wheel may have been the first victim of toxic algae that has accumulated along the coast of Brittany, France. He had carried three truckloads of rotting seaweed away from the beaches where it had been releasing poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas. He had been working without a mask or gloves. (Times) |
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Driver and boss guilty – A coach driver and his boss are facing jail after admitting manslaughter in relation to a crash in which a married couple died. The coach, which had been hired from 1-4-You Airports and Coach Travel, based in Burntwood, Staffordshire, was taking a marching band to a competition when it careered into the couple’s car near Scarborough. The driver and his boss pleaded guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence, namely because the coach was not kept in a safe and roadworthy condition, the braking system had not been checked and maintained and appropriate safety checks had not been carried out. The driver also pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving. Sentencing will take place on November 13. (B’ham Post, BBC News Website)
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| August 2009 |
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| Foreign lorries danger - The Freight Transport Association is calling for more to be done to tackle unsafe, foreign-registered lorries. It said unsafe and poorly-driven foreign lorries were giving the logistics industry a bad name even though the UK fleet was the best in Europe. (Birmingham Post) |
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| Driverless juggernauts – A report on robots by the Royal Academy of Engineering states that 30 per cent of the trucks on Britain’s roads will be fully automated by the end of the next decade. The report also mentions the possibility of robot babysitters (already on sale in Japan) as well as robot surgeons, pets and carers. (Daily Mail) |
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| L-driving potholes - Driving instructors are regularly rerouting lessons due to crumbling road surfaces and potholes, according to an AA survey. (Nationals) |
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