Focus of work
Every 20 minutes someone is killed or seriously injured in road collisions in the UK. Worldwide, 1.35 million people are killed each year, with road collisions the biggest killer of young people aged 5-29.
Accurate reporting of these deaths and injuries matters. There is growing evidence that poor reporting can confuse or misdirect concern, obscure the solutions, and even engender aggression.
Good reporting can help us better understand the problems and potential solutions. Transport can both aggravate and address some of society’s pressing challenges; from access to work, education, leisure and social opportunities, to climate change, physical and mental health, and air pollution. Through coverage of issues such as road collisions, good journalism shines a light on them, improving accuracy and clarity without sacrificing word counts.
This project aimed to encourage and enable the adoption of the Road Collision Reporting Guidelines among those reporting on road collisions, namely emergency services, where much collision reporting language originates from, and media bodies.
Impact
This project created a new set of guidelines for reporting road collisions.
Key achievements:
- The guidelines were fully backed by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and shared with all police forces
- Discussions with Welsh, Scottish and English police forces suggested support for the guidelines but a shortage of time to engage on implementing them in practice
- South Yorkshire and Warwickshire Police, as well as South Wales, have agreed to formally adopt the guidelines and others have done so informally
- Developed a report to understand the language used by police forces and how it can be improved
- Produced a webinar Masterclass for Co-Pilot, a new paid platform providing Continued Professional Development (CPD) learning for professionals working in road safety
- Presented some of the guidelines work to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) at the Houses of Parliament
- Gathered names for an open letter to National Highways to change ‘accident’ for ‘collision’ on their overhead gantries – they have since agreed to trial alternatives to the ‘accident’
- Small changes from police forces have positively impacted the language used in national news stories, such as in this article in the Guardian.