Hello and welcome to episode four of the Project EDWARD 2023 Podcast. My role in the Safe system with me, James Luckhurst. In this program we catch up with Chris Spinks, Managing Director of Westcotec, for a chat about the best ways of utilizing technology to influence driver behaviour. But first, as it's mid-November, everyone in the road safety sector will be preparing to embrace one of the biggest happenings in the calendar Road Safety Week.

It's organised by Brake, and just a few days ago I had the opportunity to find out a bit more from Lucy Straker the campaigns manager at Brake, the Road Safety Charity.

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It's organized by Brake, and just a few days ago I had the opportunity to find out a bit more. My name is Lucy Straker and I'm the campaigns manager at Brake, the Road Safety Charity. My role essentially is to lead on all of brakes campaigns we have. Our main goal is basically to have zero road deaths. And also we as well as doing that, we also advocate and supports road crash victims as well.

Unknown

I mean, speed criteria, does it does it stop road test? Does it stop road crashes and does it support road victims when when we're looking at anything, we ask those three questions. Let's talk about speed then, and I ask that big suggests that because it is the theme of Road Safety Week that's just coming up. How did you come up with that theme?

Unknown

Well, yes, Road Safety Week starts on the 19th to the 25th of November. Yeah. The theme we went with this year is let's talk about speed, because there's been a lot of speed campaigns over the years. I've seen I remember some when I was when I was young. Many people talk to me about the kind of favorite ones or the ones that they remember the most, but we've always kind of been telling people what to do with regards to speed.

Unknown

But we've found obviously recently with North Wales moving to a 20 mile an hour default speed limit, there's a lot of opinions around speed and a lot of assumptions as well. So what we wanted to do is to host kind of like a national conversation, to create a space where people are open to talk about speed, whatever position they may be coming from, whatever sector they may be coming from.

Unknown

So we've been kind of asking some kind of questions to kind of gauge people's responses. So stuff like, is it ever okay to speed? Is it ever occasion where you think it is okay to speak? Or if you're in a passenger seat and the driver was driving too fast, or for the road conditions or driving over the speed limit, would you feel comfortable in asking them to slow down?

Unknown

And if not, why not? And then flipping that and asking people if you were the driver and somebody in your car when your passengers asked you to slow down, how would you feel? How would you respond? I just try to understand people's kind of perceptions of speed with regard, like we find that speeding is speeding is a crime.

Unknown

So if you drive over the speed limit, it is a crime and you will you can get caught by the speed cameras, by police, you can get points on your license, all those kind of things. However, it is one, it is something that is done every day by many, many people. We probably see every time you go on the road if you're driving or if you're a pedestrian or a cyclist or whatever you want doing with regard to the road, you will probably see somebody driving at speed, maybe not excessive speed, but driving over the speed limit or driving faster for the road conditions.

Unknown

And I'm guessing that each person doing it will have a different reason or justification in their head for doing it. Therefore, the kind of one size fits all campaigning isn't going to work as well. We want to understand why that is, because a lot of time when you talk about speeding, people think about those people doing like 50, 60, 70 and a 30, but speeding over the speed limit is speeding, and every time you choose to go at a certain speed, what you're doing is you are deciding the S3 If you do come across a hazard, that that choice that you've made to speed or what speed you go out decides on whether you are

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able to stop in time. It is it decides on whether you are able to what the severity of the crash will be if you can't stop in time. So if you're driving at 20 miles an hour, somebody runs out into the road and your stopping distance is 12 meters, then you may not hit them because you are driving at a speed which enables you to stop in time.

Unknown

But if you've chosen to drive at 30 or 40 miles an hour, you may not be able to stop in time. And so if you are choosing to drive faster, every time you drive a bit faster, it increases the severity of the crash that's going to happen. So it's just trying to understand kind of like why we do that, why why we kind of justify it to ourselves.

Unknown

Oh, it's because I need to catch that train or I needed to get to this or it was it was really important I did this or somebody was really far behind me and I didn't know what to do. If we can really get to understand what are those kind of those motivators are the why we drive over the speed limit or faster them the road conditions need us to do, then we can start to really unpick it and get to a place where actually speeding isn't socially acceptable as it is at the moment.

Unknown

And we get to place one of these driving at safe speeds. Now let's bring in the families that the brake has traditionally given a voice to. How helpful can the voice of the victim and their families be in in spreading messages and influencing behavior of others? I think the extremely important we break, we run the National Road Victim Service.

Unknown

And so we look we kind of support and advocate for probably about a thousand families every every year. And some of those families come to us afterwards and say that they want to be part of our campaigning work and help kind of push for the sake driving and the zero deaths. And so there are there are a number of very victims and families who are helping us on Road Safety Week coming up and sharing their story.

Unknown

And when we go and ask people what would influence you to drive within the speed limit that quite a number of people say kind of hearing stories from people who's, you know, whose loved ones have died because of a road crash, because of speed in those countries, and hearing that and kind of understanding the consequences. But something not everybody is impacted by that, that people, not everybody, changes their way.

Unknown

The kind of speeding kind of behavior because of that. So we have to do kind of a number of different ways of sharing kind of the consequences. So some people will adopt their speeding because they hear the story of a brief victim and somebody will do it because there's more enforcement told as a speed camera rule, those kind of things.

Unknown

So we have to kind of it's not just a one size fits all. We have to kind of to we've tried to offer a number of different ways for people to see and see themselves in those messages as well and realize that actually look at will. So be a bit of self-reflection and think, actually, it's not worth me driving an extra five, ten miles an hour to get to that appointment or to get to that because actually doesn't add that much to your journey time anyway, but it does add more risk to your journey.

Unknown

I was saying like, how many times have you driven down the road and are cars overtaking you at speed? And then the next set of traffic lights you get to, you're sitting behind them because they've not really got that much further, but they have added to the risk of their journey. So that's why we need to have a number of ways to kind of show the consequences.

Unknown

And brief victims are very important because it's very important to hear the you know, to hear the story and hear their voices and how we can make the world better for them. Kind of the process crash response as well is so important as a as a way to kind of achieve in that vision. Zero of no Road deaths.

Unknown

So hearing from bereaved victims is is vitally important. It's something that we work hard to do in a very supportive way as well. So we don't just put anybody out there. The people who come forward and do share their stories have worked with us for a while and are in a comfortable place where they feel like they can share their story to kind of help other people.

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So just talk through the week of how it splits up. It starts on the 19th of November is also the world day of remembrance for road traffic victims. And so we thought it was really important to kind of start on that day and really give a platform to bereaved victims and to really remember those those who have been affected by road crashes and road deaths.

Unknown

And then on the Monday, we called it break day, and that's when we're really kind of pushing our campaign messaging, which is around really kind of let's talk about speed. And we've done a number of surveys and we've been out in the streets talking to people and we've got a number of different reports and videos and all those kind of things which we which we're going to start to share about people's perceptions about speed.

Unknown

And we're not just showing people's voices aligned with what we think. We're trying to show a real plethora of voices so that we can really understand everybody's perspective. The Tuesday we're kind of assigning to emergency services. So we've got a number of organizations from the church services involved. There's some police officers doing some big fundraising challenges. We've got all the police kind of forces going out and doing like junior speed watchers.

Unknown

And we've got you know, there's organizations like Air Ambulance and those of things doing some blogs and that kind of stuff. So there's lots of activities happening. The Wednesday is Schools and Educators Day. So obviously keeping children safe on on the journeys to and from school and just generally keeping them safe is really, really important. And then on the Thursday, we're looking at kind of like professional drivers and we've we've been working with a lot with our kind of corporate partners as well.

Unknown

We've got we've got some good sponsors such as like DHL and Awful and All Together. So they're kind of really promoting that through their networks as well. On the Friday, it's known as Fleet Friday. So we're really kind of delving into the fleets and we've we've done a lot of work with Fleet. So we've got a number of different activities happening right across all of our fleet partners as well.

Unknown

So it's really kind of give them a voice and help them share road safety messages right across their sectors and right across their drivers and all those kind of things. Then on a Saturday is what we call Communities Day, opening it right up to everybody, kind of like charities and religious organizations and just general communities around your local area.

Unknown

You know what? What are the real kind of key issues around speed, around your local area? What we're doing is all through the week is we're kind of we'll be posting polls and questions and videos and things and trying to encourage as many people as possible to share their thoughts and their things. And then we'll we'll try and amplify that outside Road Safety Week.

Unknown

Well, we have what we know we call the break side Challenge, which is a fundraising challenge, which we're running right throughout the week. And it's called Break five because five people die on our roads every day. And what we're asking people to do is sign up to the break a challenge and to do something that's connected to the number five.

Unknown

So we've got people by baking like five cakes and selling them within their office. We've got people like our chief executive, Ross Morlock, Cycling 555 miles throughout the week. I myself am running 55 kilometers throughout the month. I'm doing a five mile walk with some of my colleagues as well. So we've got loads of other people involved right across across the sector.

Unknown

There's a police officer called Mike Templeman who's doing a really big kind of run in Lincolnshire on the Sunday. So there's lots and stuff happening and we really encourage people to get involved. The idea being that you can get involved from just doing a small five mile kind of walk with your friends or baking five cakes or you can do a really big 565 mile challenge if you want to.

Unknown

So it's really open to everybody and we just really encourage everyone to get involved. And then my job from just after the week has done, aside from having a bit of a sit down and a cup of tea and biscuits, will be to really kind of delve into all those assumptions and perceptions and and thoughts and feelings. And then we can we can start to really unpick how we can best move to a place where there are zero road test because we know that like it's one in four crashes are a direct result from speeding.

Unknown

But also speeding is generally part of every single kind of road crash that happens because generally speaking, if a crash occurs, usually because somebody has been going too fast for whatever reason, that may be, it might not be speeding, but it could be like too fast, the road conditions and those coming. So we've got loads and loads of different organizations involved sharing things and will be will be really more things as we kind of go out through the week.

Unknown

But I just encourage you to kind of come on tour across our social and to our websites and just get involved, share our things, share your thoughts and views. We're hoping to go on as many kind of talk shows and things possible and get people's views and thoughts and those kind of things. So yes, just lots of lots of talking and more importantly, lots of listening as well.

Unknown

Lucy Straker from break and will certainly be supporting Road Safety Week here at Project and what you can do on social media using the hashtag road Safety Week. Thanks, Lucy Straker and good luck. Now to the role of technology in influencing driver behavior. And a conversation was one of Project Edward's longest serving supporters recorded recently at Highways UK.

Unknown

Chris Spinks, managing director of Western Tech. Chris, we're talking in this series a lot about different people and their role in the safe systems. Is that something you've given some thought to and what would be your answer? Western Tech is all about protecting people, saving lives on the road and making sure that they get home safe at the end of the day.

Unknown

And a big part of that is roadside furniture is drivers ability to react to situations ahead of them and prevent collisions. So that is what we work to. An interesting area is data. There's so much available now. How important is data to Western attack and how do you see your relationship with data changing, developing in the future? A high percentage of our sites are able to gather traffic data.

Unknown

So time day 86 percentile average speeds high and low speeds. And that sort of data is what's required to enable local authorities, scheme designers, police forces to look at their deployment strategies. Data is everything because you need to see what's going on in a particular location to be able to put solutions in place to deal with whatever the issues are.

Unknown

And what are the big issues, in your opinion right now? The kind of phrase that we use at West Gtech is giving the driver an enhanced level of information to make a better decision when dealing with a situation. So over high bridge warning, oncoming vehicles, warnings, collision avoidance systems, and also common hoegaarden speed, so many drivers don't realize what speed they're doing.

Unknown

And when you couple the fact that they don't know how fast they go and the fact that they don't know what speed limit they are in, then that is a recipe for disaster. So the text signal activated signs with LEDs and, you know, give those absentminded drivers the information they need to then slow down and do the proper speed in the proper area.

Unknown

And do you have evidence that works everywhere from Heathrow Airport Road to collision reduction in Northumbria with collision avoidance systems? We have it everywhere. We have over 13,000 signs in the UK now, so that data availability is a huge store for people to be able to look at what's going on in their area and make appropriate decisions with cost effective data, cost effective interventions to then, as I say, keep people safe on the road.

Unknown

And how do you see it developing? We are developing remote access data so that people will be able to access the data from the signs remotely. We already have that in place in several areas now, and more and more people are coming on board with that. We have collaboration with various companies that will enable us to access more data and will give them access to the data that we're collecting.

Unknown

So to make things so much better and more effective for the whole country in terms of road safety, you might be willing to comment on a wider issue that has been in the headlines recently, this war on motorists. Are you part of the war on motorists? Absolutely. No. And as a traffic cop, I may well have been considered to be part of the war on motorists, but when I was on the road as a as a police sergeant and a chief inspector, ultimately my job was to educate and force if necessary.

Unknown

And as a as I say, so much make those journeys safer and ensure those people get home. All of WestConnex products are about education. We don't do anything about enforcement, so I don't see us as part of the war on motorists. I see us as part of the solution to keep motorists safe. Everything should be in the round.

Unknown

So the road traffic law is exactly the same as any other law. Very few people get killed by shoplifters and people who commit criminal damage. But far too many people are getting killed by people on the road who are breaking the law. Last question, Chris, your opportunity. If you were roads minister for the day, what would be on your to do list?

Unknown

If I was roads minister for the day, I would listen properly to the people that know and I would listen to local authorities, I would listen to local people and I would make sure that there were mechanisms in place to deal with local problems because we're based in Norfolk. I've been a police officer in Norfolk and Suffolk. The problems there are so different to the problems in in inner cities in Manchester and London, on the M25.

Unknown

And you can't just deal with all of them with a one size fits all approach. We have to break it down to local areas that deal with the local issues. Chris Spinks from Westcotec And that brings this episode to an end. Do encourage all your friends and colleagues to like our podcast and download it from their favorite podcast platform or simply tune in via the project website.

Unknown

Next week it'll be Darren Lindsey in the chair. He'll be in conversation with Mark Cartwright of National Highways. Don't miss it. But for now from me, James Luckhurst. It's goodbye.