By Julie Armstrong

Last updated 13:35, Saturday, 19 April 2008

CUMBRIA Road Safety Partnership has announced its ambition to become the best performing road safety partnership in the north west.

Kevin Tea: ’When we started monitoring accident hotspots with safety cameras, in the first year there was a 69 per cent reduction’

This was said to be a realistic aim at the county council’s Safe and Secure Communities Scrutiny Panel, which met in Carlisle earlier this month.

A progress report for 2007 was given by Rob Terwey, head of transport and spatial planning. He said the county achieved its road safety targets three years early.

Last year saw 319 people killed and seriously injured (KSIs) on Cumbria’s roads, below the 2010 target of 333.

Kevin Tea, communications manager for Safer Roads for Cumbria, said: “We were charged by the Government in 2007 to reduce the baseline figure of KSIs by 40 per cent by 2010.

“We managed to do that by the end of last year – three years early.

“We were having 49 KSIs every month until 2003, when we started monitoring 50 KSI hotspots with safety cameras. In the first year, there was a 69 per cent reduction,” said Mr Tea.

“We were the first in the UK to make the county the hotspot, when we started moving the cameras around last spring. Introducing that sense of uncertainty has been very effective. Now North Yorkshire are coming to talk to us about cameras because their KSI figures are so dire. Devon and Cornwall have done that too.”

The progress report said since 1995 several speed guns had been purchased for community use, and the Fire Service’s Road Awareness Training with 16-18-year-olds had been very successful.

But it said a weakness in not addressing 12-14-year-olds in schools needed to be addressed.

The report recommended looking at alternative punishments for speeding, such as speed awareness training courses rather than penalty points. Mr Terwey said figures on shock boards – strategically-placed roadside boards quoting shocking KSI statistics – were in urgent need of update.

These are located in roads which had a high KSI rate, such as the A595 Thursby roundabout, the A591 at Chestnut Hill, and the A590 at the Penny Bridge A5092 approach.

But a review last month said the boards were no longer effective and should be removed.

JArmstrong@cngroup.co.uk