South Lanarkshire Council has won a national award for its efforts in road safety and traffic management.
At the Road Safety Forum on Tuesday (November 1) councillors heard of the work carried out by the local authority in promoting road safety.
It is that work which led to the council becoming the winner of the ‘most effective road safety, traffic management and enforcement’ category as part of the Scottish Transport Awards 2022.
Councillor Susan Kerr (Avondale and Stonehouse) welcomed the work. and said:: “Congrats for the award from Scottish Transport Awards for being recognised for being the most effective road safety management enforcement, I think that’s really outstanding and fantastic.”
The council has carried out work and imposed measures to fit in line with the Scottish Government’s ‘Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2030,’ which was launched in February.
The framework sets out national targets and measures for casualty reduction with the long-term goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries in road transport by 2050.
South Lanarkshire Council has introduced its own approach to meet the Scottish Government targets.
A range of measures have been introduced. This includes the four ‘E’s of road safety, which are education, engineering, enforcement and encouragement to enhance road safety and reduce accidents and casualties.
The council also receives details of recorded injury accidents occurring on the roads from Police Scotland and uses it to assess road safety enquiries and to target resources and improvements where three or more injury accidents occur in the previous three years, or on routes that have an injury accident rate greater than the national average for the type of route.
The council also has a Route Action Plan Assessment where an assessment of rural routes is conducted on an annual basis, where roads are looked at in sections to determine if they have an accident rate greater than the national average. This provides a greater priority to locations experiencing more serious casualties.
In line with the Scottish Government framework, an additional approach was taken by the council towards targeting road safety interventions where the focus is placed on the vulnerable road users which include children, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, road users aged 70 and over, road users between 17 to 25 and in areas of highest deprivation.
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