Steve Gooding, former director general at the Department for Transport and current RAC Foundation director, discusses the urgent need to get more momentum behind the national road safety strategy.

Assiduous readers of Highways may recall that back in the February edition I welcomed the publication of the Government's road safety strategy, observing that, however hard it may have been to get it pulled together and launched, the really hard slog would be in bringing it to life.

Things looked like they might be off to a racing start with the publication of five consultations collectively posing many questions (far too many for me to tot up right now) aimed at helping shape and refine the Government's proposed approach to a range of issues. These include eyesight testing for older drivers, tougher penalties for motoring offences, compulsory learning periods for young drivers, aligning vehicle standards with the latest EU safety requirements and modernising motorcycle testing and training.

For organisations like mine, it was time to roll the sleeves up and get stuck in, offering such help and insights as we could.

Now, as spring gives way to summer, is the race that began so briskly up to speed? 

I'd have to say that it doesn't really feel like it.

Barely had we got going than the deadline for responding to the consultations was extended (the original documents not having been made available in all the required language formats). Unfortunate. We're only talking a couple of weeks in a 10-year programme. But it is of such small things that a sense of pace is conveyed. Or not.

There was a welcome, if fleeting, reference to the road safety strategy and targets in Better Connected, the integrated national transport strategy published in April. But, as reported in this magazine, RIS 3 has landed like a lead balloon in safety circles with its – to put it kindly – modest target for National Highways to achieve a 7.5% reduction in the number of deaths and serious injuries on its network by the end of 2031.

Readers of Highways will know that much of what needs to be done to achieve the 2035 road safety targets applies to local roads, driver behaviour and vehicle design. But that 7.5% still jars.

In May, we had the King's Speech setting out the Government's legislative programme. Let me save you some time before you scrutinise the lengthy list of bills for mention of road safety measures, because there were none.

And I'll just observe that the political environment, globally, domestically and locally is throwing up its own challenges at the moment.

I don't want to cast undue shade on the prospects for making our roads safer, but the nearest to a positive I've heard in recent weeks was an observation that if petrol and diesel prices stay high that might mean people drive a bit less and drive a bit more slowly and carefully when they do. That strikes me as a very thin silver lining in a very dark cloud.

We desperately need a bit of ‘oomph'. Here's a thought – Nick Joyce, the new National Highways CEO, could announce that in developing the business plan for delivery of the RIS, he is making clear that the 7.5% target is not a stretch to be achieved by a whisker but a baseline to be exceeded – the only question being by how much. Of such small but significant signals will confidence and, perhaps, a sense of pace be built.

To hear more from Steve Gooding, be sure to sign up for Highways magazine - available in print and digital - here.

You can also see him take part in a panel presenting evidence to the Transport Committee on the Government's recent Road Safety Strategy on 3 June 2026 at 9.15am - available to watch here.