Driver Hire launches Road Safety Week campaign

This week (November 20th -26th) is Road Safety Week and leading franchisor Driver Hire is encouraging all its franchisees to give it their full support.

“Road deaths in the UK are at the highest level for five years,” says Justine Turner, Driver Hire’s Road Safety Week co-ordinator. “That’s the disappointing news from the Department for Transport (DfT) which recently published figures for 2016. They show that there were 1792 deaths on our roads – 4% up on 2015.

“Cutting your speed and observing speed limits can play a part in reducing road deaths,” she continues. “That’s why the road safety charity Brake has chosen ‘Speed down, save lives’ as the theme for this year’s Road Safety Week.”

Whilst the DfT suggests that increasing traffic levels can be used to explain some of the increase, a lot of it is down to driver behaviour. The report on road casualties confirms that breaking the speed limit or driving too fast for conditions was recorded by the police as a contributory factor in one in four fatal crashes in the UK.

Brake’s 2017 Road Safety Week campaign highlights the following points for all drivers to remember:

• rural roads are not race tracks
• 20mph is the only safe speed in heavily built-up areas used by pedestrians and cyclists
• going slow = stopping in time
• speed is scary and noisy. It stops communities being enjoyable places for children and families to walk, talk and play
• speed cameras work. They save lives
• Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) is an important development that is likely to be fitted to all vehicles in the future

“Road Safety Week is a great opportunity to involve our franchisees in a nationwide annual event which is of benefit to local communities,” Justine continues. “Driver Hire franchisees across our network have around 3,200 drivers out on the road on any given day of the week, so Brake’s ongoing road safety campaign always has our support.”