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With more than 126,000 motor vehicles on the island and a road traffic collision rate higher than other regions of the UK, Jersey has long wrestled with the issue of road safety.
The 2021 Island Road Safety Review concluded that "there is an established road safety problem that needs to be addressed" and called for a Road Safety Strategy to bring into effect a 50% reduction in fatal and serious injuries over the period from 2023 to the end of 2032.
This new strategy, which now has funding, will bring the island in line with UK guidance and see the hiring of two new roles to manage road safety in the island.
Gordon Forrest, Head of Driver and Vehicle Standards (DVS), said: "We're not behind the UK necessarily, but living in a small, heavily populated island with 126,000 motor vehicles on the register. We have to manage the space slightly better than we are at the moment. That's not 'we, the DVS' or 'we, the Government' or 'we, the public' – it's all of us together."
Mr Forrest also expressed the need for a renewed focus on road safety education, citing France as somewhere this teaching begins in primary school.
In 2021, DVS worked in partnership with Jersey's Probation Service to establish a new educational programme for young motoring offenders: the Roadsafe Programme.
The Service's latest annual report revealed that the second biggest offence group for all new supervisions was road traffic or motoring offences.
On this week's episode of the Bailiwick Podcast, Gordon Forrest discusses more about the programme and its successes, as well as the wider plan to improve road safety in the island...
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