Speaking at the RoadTrace ITS Webinar 2024

I’m pleased to announce that I will be speaking at the upcoming RoadTrace ITS Webinar 2024 on Thursday, October 10, from 12-1pm, where we’ll discuss how predictive technology can help authorities take a more proactive approach to road safety. For far too long, authorities have relied on casualty data to guide decisions. While important, waiting for crashes to happen before we act is no longer acceptable, especially when we now have tools which can predict potential collisions before they occur.

We must ask ourselves: Are we truly doing everything in our power to prevent road deaths and serious injuries?

Road crashes don’t just take lives - they shatter them. They devastate families and send ripples of trauma through entire communities. Every life lost on the road represents a parent, partner, child, sibling or friend whose future has been stolen. The human cost is immeasurable, and this is why we must do everything we can to prevent these tragedies before they happen.

As someone who has been passionate about road safety for over 20 years, I know firsthand the devastation that road crashes cause, and we’ve made little progress in reducing deaths and injuries in more than a decade. Road crashes claim more lives in the UK than murder and terrorism combined, yet the urgency to address this issue often falls far short. If we are serious about achieving Vision Zero - eliminating road deaths and serious injuries by 2040 - we need to do things differently. 

What we’re doing right now is simply maintaining casualty levels. That’s not good enough. We must embrace innovative, proactive tools, which use real-time data to anticipate where future crashes might occur, based on patterns like clusters of harsh braking. This kind of intervention means we can finally start preventing crashes before lives are lost, rather than reacting after the fact.

From a communications perspective, being reactive is a PR nightmare. It’s not enough to say “we're unable to act as nobody has died on this road yet” when residents raise concerns about speeding or dangerous driving.

If we claim to support Vision Zero, we must show the public that we’re taking proactive measures and using all the tools at our disposal to keep them safe.

At the webinar, I’ll be discussing how we can better communicate these efforts to the public, making it clear that we are doing everything possible to protect lives. We all have a role to play, and transparency - through media and social media - is key to building trust.

Event details:  RoadTrace ITS Webinar 2024 Thursday, October 10, 12-1pm Click here to register for the event

Rebecca Morris Vision Zero Communications