In my article Saving Lives with Seatbelts – with a Little Help from Charles and Diana | Barry Sheerman, I detail the car accident that started my lifelong ambition to reduce death and serious accidents in road crashes, an accident that could have had a very different ending had my young family not been wearing seatbelts. Subsequently, the article details one of my proudest moments as an MP – succeeding in making the compulsory wearing of seatbelts law in 1981, a moment that would not have been possible without the backing of a determined coalition of campaigners.
Following this successful seatbelt legislation our triumphant group realised we had huge potential to secure even greater results in Parliament and elsewhere. Through our joint ambition to further reduce unnecessary deaths and serious injuries in road crashes, we agreed to keep the group together and named it the Safety in Transport Action Group (STAG). After only a few days we felt the group deserved a name with more clout and The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) was born, with Jeanne Breen as our first Chief Executive.
PACTS was motivated to base our campaigns and recommendations on evidence-based research. As a result, the group was well received by ministers, such as Sir Peter Bottomley MP, Parliamentarians and safety experts from the beginning, and steadily grew in influence to become the most respected campaigning organisation on road safety in the UK.
As a powerful advocate for a range of safety measures, and according to our commitment to evidence-based policy, PACTS set up three different working parties, on: road environment, road user behaviour, and vehicle design. The working parties would come up with the latest research, but we also looked to gain experience from countries similar to ours, that seemed to be making significant strides in safety on the roads, such as The Netherlands and Sweden. The ambition, first and foremost, was to have a powerful and cohesive group in the UK. We welcomed new members, all of whom paid membership fees which provided vital funds for PACTS’ work. Individuals and organisations joined us on the basis that they all paid a similar fee as we wanted the group to have one voice, without a majority influence, so that no one member dominated funding in order to persuade us to take any particular line of action. Over the years the group grew in stature and influence and is still regularly consulted by the Department of Transport and Department of Health. PACTS continues to be well respected today and is consulted by governments of all parties, influencing government policy but also educating elected politicians and members of the House of Lords on latest ideas, trends and research findings.
Having achieved our goal of gaining serious credibility at home, we found that, as the UK had joined the EU, much of the regulation of transportation in our country was now powerfully influenced by the European Parliament. The next logical step was to create a common entity with other European countries, so we started a new group based in Brussels, called the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) in 1993. The leading countries on the subject, at the time, along with the UK, were The Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden, but the group rapidly expanded in membership across the European Union members.
In many ways ETSC was very easy to set up because the European Parliament was willing to oblige the creation of such a body, and subsequently ETSC became as influential in Europe as PACTS was in Britain, bringing together huge amounts of knowledge from Europe and the rest of the world and influencing the legislation on everything from e-scooters, speed reduction, and tackling alcohol-related road deaths, to the standards of car design.
As we became increasingly passionate about the role of influencing the saving of life through transport safety, I was approached by the World Bank to join a new initiative to tackle road safety globally. This organisation was to be called the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP). GRSP was set up in 1999 so that nations could share information, innovation, and bring scientists, researchers and politicians together across the world to reduce unnecessary deaths on the road. I flew to New York to attend the inaugural meeting and shortly after was asked to chair GRSP, which I did for a number of years. In the months before I took over as Chair, there seemed to be a degree of confusion and lack of leadership. When I became Chair, I decided that we must appoint a highly knowledgeable Chief Executive, supported by a highly qualified researcher/administrator. Once this was actioned, I was determined to bring in many of the world’s experts on road safety who had been critical of the way GRSP tackled the huge task of making a difference in the high casualty rates, on the road, worldwide.
Prior to my becoming Chair a group of these experts had issued a round robin calling for a much clearer evidence-based approach to international road safety and for the GRSP to have more focus and capacity to affect change. In response all the signatories were invited to become an advisory committee to GRSP, giving the organisation greater authenticity and respect.
GRSP was a promising coalition and we met regularly. However, its greatest shortcoming was that it had to raise funds to run its operation out of the International Red Cross in Geneva, funds that had to come from membership fees. Annual membership was 20,000 US Dollars, with the result that many of the not-for-profit groups, the campaigning groups, and even the research institutions were reluctant to join. Steadily GRSP became very reliant on big business. Only representatives of global companies such as British Petroleum (BP), Shell (another oil company), the alcohol industry, and leading car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, could afford the high cost of participation, causing an inevitable shift in membership away from academics and experts in road safety.
Whilst there were some good people involved, it became increasingly clear to me that I was chairing a committee which comprised more of senior executives interested in corporate affairs than genuinely knowledgeable, experienced road safety researchers or campaigners.
In time, I felt I’d given the GRSP as much time and energy as I was able to give and resigned as Chair. Although I was Chairman of PACTS and a leading member of the ETSC, none of my organisations were able to contribute $20,000 a year in membership. Thus, I parted company with GRSP and hoped it would thrive without my participation. My interest in international road safety continued partly through the ETSC but also with cooperation with researchers, often in universities, working on various aspects of road deaths and serious injuries globally, and how to reduce them.
In 2001 an old friend of mine, David Ward, who was involved with the F1 racing group, set up an independent safety foundation called The FIA Foundation, promoting safe and sustainable transport. David Ward had worked with me in Parliament when we both worked for the former Labour Party leader, John Smith. He was a key person on transport safety, and he persuaded me to join this new group called the Global Legislators for Road Safety. I accepted with alacrity and became Chair of the group, which was later taken over by the World Health Organisation (WHO). I continued to chair the organisation, which like all international organisations entailed much travelling. In these days of awareness of global warming and climate change, travelling for meetings has become far less acceptable as a mode of communication, however, back then, as the group began to work as a team sharing research information, ideas and strategies, I spent some time meeting legislators in different areas of the world.
Unfortunately, the ability to communicate easily was a substantial barrier to the success of the Global Legislators for Road Safety. On one visit to China, I found it difficult to judge the impact my remarks were having on my hosts in a series of meetings. I changed tack, using China’s one-child policy as a theme in my talks. I focussed my speeches on the awful concept, which we all want to avoid, of a policeman or policewoman knocking on the door, to inform you that your child, father, mother, sister, brother, has been killed in a road accident. As I developed this theme, I got much more attention from the audience and built an excellent rapport with many Chinese transport safety experts.
Another country of particular interest globally is Thailand, where road casualties are far too high. Too often the casualties are vulnerable road users: pedestrians, cyclists, people using small, motorised vehicles, to get to work. The need for evidence-based policies to tackle this are clear.
I was reluctant to reduce my role in the Global Legislators for Road Safety, but again campaigning costs money and air travel is increasingly unacceptable. I hope the World Health Organisation will maintain its interest in reducing these unnecessary casualties, it should be their highest priority.
I was keen to return to my research-based roots regarding road safety. My work on global road safety, has led me to forge close friendships with fellow passionate campaigners across the world, which is how I met a professor from the New Delhi Institute of Technology, the renowned researcher, Professor Dinesh Mohan. Dinesh and I were unhappy about the present state of awareness of the huge casualty levels of not just children and young people but all vulnerable road users worldwide. We were particularly worried that it was difficult for researchers across the globe, to connect with each other, share information, and work together cooperatively, positively, towards a common goal. We came up with the idea of a system that would link all researchers worldwide, to build up a database not only of current research, but research that had been carried out in the past and we launched The Independent Council for Road Safety (ICORSI).
Many people aren’t aware that the biggest killer of young people worldwide is road accidents. This isn’t always in cars, as evidenced in countries like Thailand. It’s a dreadful waste of life and is a tremendous challenge for transport safety groups such as ICORSI.
Dinesh and I started campaigning together and bringing researchers together. In March 2020, just as COVID was impacting across the globe there was a United Nations meeting of all the Transport Ministers worldwide, in Stockholm. We all thought it wouldn’t take place, but eventually it did, we all attended, and it was the last international conference for a very long time. At the conference ICORSI launched something that we had been developing steadily, systematically, and were extremely proud of. We had, with the help of a huge number of researchers and emeritus professors from across all nations, evaluated every piece of reputable transport safety research from the last 60 years and vetted it for quality. Each piece of research was read at least two or three times and looked at in terms of what it added to the narrative of effective research on transport safety. The great value of this was that we knew every piece of research from the last 60 years, which informed researchers and politicians where research had been carried out, but more importantly where no, or little, research was being carried out, for example, on two, or three-wheeler vehicles in Africa.
When I first attended the conference, I was still feeling frustrated about the inability to communicate freely and conveniently, and whilst we were in Stockholm, in light of the unravelling global situation people started talking about new ways of communication. In short, one positive that came out of the awful COVID pandemic is that it expedited virtual communication. The whole world of campaigning has changed by this innovation of technology which has made serious rapid change in many areas, in our case in transport safety, possible.
After our initial meeting in person at the Swedish conference, subsequent meetings took place on Zoom and Teams, with great success. Sadly, right at the end of COVID my dear friend, Professor Dinesh Mohan, died of a heart attack, just when we thought he was coming through COVID. As part of his legacy ICORSI continues to go from strength to strength. We communicate with each other, can track each other, bounce ideas from one to another, and have new members joining from parts of the world that we’ve not had contacts from before.
I am now confident with continued innovation that the world might be a better place, and we will see greater change in many areas, but in this case, in the reduction of accidents, crashes and deaths and serious injuries on the road. All these deaths are avoidable, they need not happen, too many young lives are being lost unnecessarily. The lives of active, clever, young people and their potential to foster change must be preserved.