Prince Michael speeches
Speech by Prince Michael at the Road Safety Awards, 6 Dec 2011
I am delighted to see so many people here today to celebrate the achievements of our award winners. It is also a great pleasure to welcome many former winners and their guests. This has been an important year for road safety not only in the United Kingdom but internationally.
At home, in a year when our casualties have fallen below 2000 - the lowest figure since national records began in 1926, Government has shifted the emphasis on decision-making and funding from Whitehall to the community. It wants more local decision making and to encourage innovation more from professionals and industry.
It is a pity that our roads minister Mike Penning cannot be with us today due to parliamentary business as I was keen to find out from him where road safety sits in the government’s priorities.
However low our casualty figures might be, the cost to the economy of each road death is around two million pounds. Two thousand of these means is a hideous £4 billion economic loss which your innovations and those of the road safety community are helping our economy, so I am surprised that Government is relying on you and others at the local level to make this valuable contribution without clearer direction and support.
Last May, a Global plan for the Decade of Action was launched at events cross the world. Many of you were involved in the London launch. I was at the one in Kenya where, as in much of the developing world, there is a need for massive improvements in road safety everywhere you look. It is a country with half the population of Britain and only a quarter of the number of vehicles on its roads yet its casualty rate is double ours.
In most of Africa and Asia the situation will get worse before it gets better – and improvement will only be possible if the Global Plan is followed.
I will return to The Decade of Action later; but now I want to concentrate on the achievements of our 2011 award winners.
You have shown considerable tenacity to bring your schemes to fruition and you deserve the highest praise. As you can see from your programmes there is a very wide variety of winners.
There are schemes involving the education of young people, others improving driver behaviour, or providing good management information and rehabilitation programmes. There are awards for road design and a range of resources for professionals and I am pleased to say two awards for organisations which provide valuable post-crash response. I was particularly pleased to see so many successful awards for motorcyclists and as part of their programmes to reduce the risk to those who drive work.
Above all I was impressed with the high quality of research and evaluation of many of the initiatives.
I want to pay a special tribute to the judges – you had a difficult task selecting winners from a very strong field with over sixty nominations to consider. Thank you for your commitment.
My thanks go to Capita Symonds and to Bosch for sponsoring the reception, and to all our other sponsors, many of whom are themselves former award winners. In every case your companies’ names are in the programme and your significant commitment has been noted. Thank you.
I am sure that you would like to join me in thanking the people behind the organisation of this ceremony and to the design team from DBDA.
We also need to thank members of the RoadSafe Board who presented many of my awards at events round the country and Lord Robertson, Chairman of the Commission for Global Road Safety who presented my awards at the Scottish Road Safety seminar.
Although I have made awards for achievements in this country since 1987 it is only ten years since I really began looking for likely winners from those countries in the developing world where the risk is so high. There have been three international winners already this year and I am pleased that representatives of those organisations are here today.
The next ten years will be crucial for Global road safety so from next year these awards will recognise achievements in direct support of the objectives of the Global Plan and of the Commission for Global Road Safety.
And, given the additional generous support being offered by The FIA Foundation, they will be presented awards at an annual major conference to be held in a different country, each year, attracting those who are doing so much to make the global plan work. I will be announcing my Premier Award for 2011 after lunch; but before we eat please can we congratulate this year’s winners.
I do hope that you all enjoyed lunch. I am also sure that you would on your behalf like me to thank the chef and the team here at The Savoy.
Earlier I mentioned how important it is for decisions to be based on high quality research, which is an essential criterion for my award judges. Research is vital if governments are to make the correct decisions. Publications such as Professor Richard Allsop’s excellent paper on the effectiveness of speed cameras is a case in point.
Many organisations in recent years have produced reports which have done much to influence road safety. None is more highly regarded that that published by the RAC Foundation. With a change in Government emphasis, commitment such as this is needed more now than ever in the past. I am therefore delighted that this year my Premier Award goes to The RAC Foundation.
