Rural Safety Management

This innovative new scheme builds on the extremely successful work carried out in both urban areas
and on major rural routes within the county.

Somerset will be divided into eight areas with local people involved in helping to develop new schemes
to make their roads safer.

The areas will be based on district and parish boundaries with West Somerset and Taunton Deane being
treated as single areas and Sedgemoor, Mendip and South Somerset divided into two areas each.

The Somerset Road Safety Partnership carefully analyses collision and casualty data to identify trends
and highlight when and where accidents are happening.

One of the projects that developed from this system was the Red Route programme, which concentrated
on major A class roads across the county.

Data analysis identified the top casualty routes and a robust set of intervention measures was introduced
which included engineering such as signing and lining, education involving driver awareness presentations
and speed enforcement using officers from the Safety Camera Partnership.

Monitoring has shown that this has been very successful and the Partnership now plans to widen the scope,
linking urban and rural projects, to reduce casualties on roads that are not main arterial routes.

Once again, data analysis will be used to identify clusters and routes with high accident rates.

No extra signs will be required for the programme except where existing signs need to be refreshed or replaced or in areas where collision data shows that additional warning signs are essential.

This new approach will give the Partnership increased flexibility to address road safety issues and maximise
partner involvement, especially the Police and the Fire & Rescue Service, as well as empowering local
communities to have more of a say about what happens in their area.