Wake Up parliamentary reception, 13 July 2011
Speech by Julie Townsend, campaigns director, Brake
Good afternoon. I’m really pleased to welcome you all on behalf of Brake to this event on tackling the crashes, deaths and injuries that result from driver tiredness.
In the past two weeks we’ve had the very good news that road deaths in Britain are at their lowest since records began, having fallen by more than half in the past decade to 1,857 in 2010.
So we have succeeded in making our roads safer. We have succeeded in lowering the risks that we all face when using roads from day to day. And most importantly, we have succeeded in sparing thousands families each year the agony and trauma of a loved one being taken from them, unexpectedly and violently, or suffering a life-changing serious injury. It’s quite an amazing thought, that there are thousands of people out there, going about their daily lives who, unbeknownst to them, have been spared a premature death, or horrific serious injury as a result of work to improve road safety.
This success has been brought about by investment in recent decades in delivering road safety work and policies at local and national level – education and awareness programmes, road and vehicle engineering measures, enforcement, and new laws prohibiting dangerous behaviour. Investment that has seen very significant financial savings as well as prevented human suffering. Looking only at the deaths that have been prevented, so not including injuries, the estimated cost-saving to society now stands at £2,460 million per year, compared to 10 years ago, because of reduced costs to health and emergency services, and reduced human costs, as much as they are quantifiable.
Yet it would be highly remiss, immoral even, for us to pat ourselves on the back and say it’s a job well done. It remains the case that five families each day must deal with the horror of a police officer knocking on the door to say that their loved one will never come back. And ten times as many must each day face the pain, upheaval and turmoil of a serious injury, many of which change lives forever. We must remember that these casualties are preventable, and therefore we must not accept them. Indeed, we must continue to do everything we can to prevent these devastating, costly and needless tragedies.
Yet we are desperately concerned that at present, not enough is being done. Indeed, important road safety work is being cut back due to spending cuts, and we no longer have national Government targets for reducing road deaths and injuries.
One of the key road safety issues that must be addressed by Government is the focus of this event. It is estimated that driver tiredness crashes account for one in five deaths on motorways and other major trunk roads, making driver tiredness a major cause of the heartbreak and trauma afflicted on families by road crashes. In actual fact, the number of casualties that result from this cause could be much higher, because it is so difficult to prove when a crash has resulted from a driver falling asleep.
Research being launched today by Brake and Cambridge Weight Plan suggests that driver tiredness is an endemic problem. Our survey reveals that a horrifying one in eight drivers say they have nodded off at the wheel, at least briefly, in the past 12 months alone.
It also shows widespread ignorance and complacency surrounding the issue – most drivers don’t follow road safety advice if they do get tired behind the wheel, and, shockingly, a quarter of drivers admit starting out on a journey when they already feel tired.
We know from research how dangerous these behaviours are. If you start on a lengthy journey with less than five hours’ sleep, you only have a one in 10 chance of staying fully awake. And if you plough on with your journey while feeling sleepy, you’re quite simply dicing with death – sleep ensues much faster than most peoplerealise, and nodding off just for a few seconds can have catastrophic consequences, especially if you’re travelling at 70mph on a motorway.
Our research also reveals that sleep conditions like sleep apnoea, which can lead to acute daytime sleepiness, and therefore be a huge risk for drivers, could be even more prevalent than previously thought. A huge six in 10 respondents told us they suffer from disturbed sleep, while one in seven say that they suffer from a sleep condition that makes them tired during the day. We suspect that the vast majority of the general public do not understand the symptoms of conditions like sleep apnoea, and don’t know that this is a condition that can be deadly behind the wheel, and yet is treatable.
So we have a number of issues contributing to driver tiredness that we are calling on the Government to address. We can see, through our research, that either most people don’t know what to do to prevent them falling asleep at the wheel, or they don’t appreciate the importance of following this advice.
So we need to increase drivers’ awareness of what they need to do, and why this is so vitally important. We need to educate drivers about sleep conditions, so people can recognise the symptoms and seek appropriate medical advice and treatment. (And we also need to ensure that doctors have appropriate guidelines to enable correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment.)
Thiseducation of drivers is especially important in relation to people who drive for work, and young drivers, so we need to see a concerted effort in targeting these audiences.
But as well as these educational and awareness measures, we also need to look at road engineering and enforcement. We need to make sure we have sufficient rest areas, to lessen the temptation to continue a journey when tired. We need to make sure we have crash barriers of suitable length on motorway bridges, to lessen the impact if a driver does nod off, and to prevent a repeat of the Selby disaster. And, crucially, we need roads policing to be given greater priority, to ensure we have adequate numbers of police patrolling our roads, able to stop weaving tired drivers before a disaster happens.
Yet at present, we are failing to see progress on these important measures. Quite the opposite. The Government’s national road safety advertising has been cut significantly, with no road safety adverts being shown on TV this year. Educational work delivered by local authorities has been scaled back in many areas due to funding cuts. Brake is currently assessing the extent of cuts to roads policing across the country, but anecdotally, the picture being painted is bleak in terms of resourcing levels. And in the Government’s road safety strategic framework, published in May, there was no specific mention at all of driver tiredness.
This lack of action, we believe, is unacceptable, so we are appealing to everyone in this room to work with us to put pressure on Government to act and invest in preventing tired driving. We must continually remind of the appalling consequences of tired driving, and I’d ask all the parliamentarians in the room to help us do that by signing an EDM on this issue, which you can do here today, and speaking to us about ways we can work together.
Through Brake’s work to support the bereaved and injured victims, whose lives are devastated by road crashes, we are all too aware of the terrible impact of tired driving on people’s lives. So through our Wake Up campaign, as well as putting forward the facts on tired driving, and what can be done to prevent it, we are working to give a voice to those families who have suffered so appallingly, and engage them in our campaign for change.
For that reason, I want to finish with a quote from Jenny Crisp, who is with us here today, in memory of her fiancée Toby Tweddell. Toby was killed age 25 by a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel.
Jenny says: “Toby was killed five years ago next month, but the pain doesn’t ever really go away. Imagine planning to spend the rest of your life with someone, and being so excited about your future together – and then suddenly, without warning, that person is taken away. You go through so many emotions, and the agony is indescribable. But ultimately you’re left with a hole in your life, and a hole inside you. And it was all because a driver fell asleep at the wheel as a result of having a sleep disorder. It could have been prevented, if the doctor had correctly diagnosed the driver’s condition, but he didn’t. I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I went through, but five years on from Toby’s death, nothing seems to have been done. More needs to be done to stop people losing their lives too soon, and families going through all this pain, as a result of tired driving crashes.”
I’d like to say a special thank you to Jenny for helping us to campaign on this crucially important issue.
And I’d like to thank you all for being here today, and thank you in advance for supporting this campaign.