Safety won’t improve until motoring groups admit there’s a problem

I'm sorry if I was wrong about the precise relationship between the IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists), the IAM Motoring Trust, the AA (Automobile Association) and the AA Motoring Trust, as Neil Greig of the IAM Motoring Trust points out (LTT Letters 25 July). Suffice it to say that the AA and IAM are linked and they are both motoring organisations implicated in irresponsibilties for the reasons explained in detail in my letter of 10th July.

These reasons are not addressed in Mr. Greig's letter. After over a century of illegal and rule breaking behaviour by motorised road users, they are still not accountable for the danger they pose to other road users. This danger can be reduced by a variety of means which I referred to - which he ignores. If he and others he describes as "road safety professionals" and the motoring organisations cannot engage in proper discussion there is no prospect of a civilised approach to safety on the road.

This refusal to accept responsibility is a feature of the IAM, AA, other motoring organisations and all too many "road safety professionals" who - often unintentionally - support them, whether it be with regard to danger or any of the other adverse effects that the motorised have on society and the environment.

Nowhere in my critique of the IAM supported "Campaign for Safer Road
Design" did I say anything like "the driver is the only one to blame in the time of an accident". I pointed out what every serious analyst of safety on the road knows already: measures to idiot-proof motor vehicle and highway environments have produced idiots. To be less crude: short term and long term risk compensatory behaviour associated with much of highway and vehicle engineering has reduced the potential for dealing with danger at source and respecting the rights of the more benign mode users to travel with less danger to them. Combined with a failure to enforce the law with appropriate sentencing, we have a fundamentally uncivilised approach to responsible road use.

If we are required to provide an environment for drivers unable or unwilling to keep their vehicles on the road or otherwise drive within the law, other road users require protection from them. All we have instead from the IAM is "driver training" which it delivers to approximately 0.3% of registered drivers. Most importantly, the IAM, AA and others are not only not doing this, but also making it difficult to even discuss the possibilities.

Dr. Robert Davis, Chair, Road Danger Reduction Forum
P. O. Box 2944, London NW10 2AX. Tel: 0208 451 1309.
chairrdrf@aol.com