Industry News from Yes Insurance

The head of a campaign group known as Safe Speed, Paul Smith, has heavily criticised the state of road safety in Britain and has decided to use National Road Safety Week to highlight his cause.

The engineer turned road safety campaigner said that not enough was being done to promote the safety of Britain's good drivers and that the lack of enforcement for those who broke the motoring laws had led to "rogue drivers" who were becoming "out of control".

Mr Smith also declared that drivers needed to improve their risk assessment skills: "Road safety isn't mainly a matter of compliance with regulations - instead it is a question of just how good we are at managing risk."

"The risk management skills of concentration, observation, anticipation, hazard recognition, hazard assessment and hazard response are the true heart of road safety. Largely we acquire these skills working alone and unaided after we have passed the driving test," he explained.

He also declared his support for those who criticised the Department for Transport's (DfT's) over-reliance on speed cameras: "Speed cameras do not make us better risk managers - they make us worse risk managers with their minefield of distracting and misleading side effects."

The Hazard Awareness part of the driving test was introduced to try and improve novice drivers' risk assessment skills, but with one in five young drivers being involved in a crash within their first year of driving, it appears the message is not getting through.

Adequate risk assessment can help prevent accidents which in turn can save careful drivers money on their car insurance.