Road safety objectives

Transport Scotland has strategic responsibility for setting road safety objectives in Scotland and is committed to safer road travel.

In Scotland, roads authorities have responsibility to manage and maintain the roads in their local area while Transport Scotland has this statutory duty in respect of trunk roads.

We aim to further reduce the number of fatalities and injuries on all of Scotland’s roads in partnership with key road safety partners throughout Scotland.

Reducing road casualties

Excellent progress was made towards achieving GB road casualty targets set jointly with the UK Government and the Welsh Assembly to the end of 2010. The latest number of reported road casualties in 2009 is at its lowest level since 1949, but we need to ensure the number of deaths and injuries continue to fall, see Key 2009 Reported Road Casualty Statistics.

On 15 June 2009, the Scottish Government published Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2020 - Go Safe on Scotland’s Roads it’s Everyone’s Responsibility. The implementation and delivery of the Framework is overseen by Transport Scotland.

This Framework sets out the first ever challenging national road safety targets set by Scottish Ministers for the next decade based on a 2004-2008 average which commenced on 1 January 2011. These targets are:

Additionally, we have a 10% reduction target in the slight casualty rate to 2020.

Strategic road safety plan 

In November 2007, we published for the first time a comprehensive Strategic Road Safety Plan for the network of strategic roads (eg motorways and trunk roads). The plan shows how we are making improvements to road safety by:

As we seek to deliver evidence-based road safety policies and interventions, we have been working in conjunction with our partners to take forward a range of research, evaluations and debates on issues such as school transport safety and young drivers. We have produced a range of reports:

The Transport Scotland safety teams 

There are two road safety teams sitting within Transport Scotland – the Road Safety Policy Team and the Strategic Road Safety Team.

The Road Safety Policy Team is responsible for helping to ensure the delivery of the short-term, mid-term and long-term commitments in Scotland’s Road Safety Framework in partnership with other key stakeholders. It is vital therefore that co-operation, dialogue and appropriate decision making takes place at a strategic level. To enable this, we have set up a Strategic Partnership Board and supporting Operational Partnership Group with representation from a variety of organisations with a vested interest in road safety. The Board meets quarterly and minutes from all board meetings are available online. Scotland’s road safety achievements are summarised in an annual public report. The reports for 2009, 2010 and 2011 have been published.

Sitting within the Road Safety Policy Team is Road Safety Scotland (RSS) which is responsible for the development of road safety education materials which provide an end-to-end education and training programme in road safety starting from early years and continuing throughout the school curriculum and beyond. These resources are provided free of charge and many are supported by bespoke websites. RSS also administers Scotland’s road safety publicity under the ‘Don’t risk it’ banner.

The Strategic Road Safety Team is responsible for monitoring the safety performance of the trunk road network as well as analysing injury accident data. From this work, the team takes remedial measures to reduce or eradicate identified accident types at specific sites. We carry out audits on new constructions and installations and we consider new technologies such as improved road material and roadside furniture.

Scotland's motorways and trunk road network represent only 6% of all Scotland’s roads. This network carries 37% of all traffic and accounts for 16% of all injuries related to road accidents.

Cycling safety

In March 2012, Keith Brown MSP, Minister for Housing and Transport, convened a special cycling-focussed meeting of the Road Safety Operational Partnership Group (OPG). The event brought together a range of bodies including local authorities, the emergency services and cycling stakeholders organisations (including Cycling Scotland and Sustrans), to discuss ways of increasing safety on the roads.

Cycling safety meeting minutes (pdf, 37KB)

See also landslides, lighting, Incident Support and Average Speed Cameras.