Road safety charity Brake has announced the theme of its annual Road Safety Week, which calls on road users to make a pledge for better road safety.

Road Safety Week will take place between 21 - 27 November this year. The theme for 2016’s Road Safety Week will focus around the ‘Brake Pledge’ which features six pledge points: slow, sober, secure, silent, sharp and sustainable.

  • Slow – travelling too fast for the conditions or breaking the speed limit is recorded as a contributory factor in more than one in four fatal crashes
  • Sober – one in seven road deaths are caused by a drink or drug drivers
  • Secure – wearing a seatbelt reduces the chances of being killed in a road collision by 50%
  • Silent – drivers are three times more likely to crash when performing a complex secondary task, such as talking on a mobile phone
  • Sharp – there are an estimated 2,900 road causalities caused by poor driver vision every year
  • Sustainable – reducing the amount of drivers on the road could help to reduce the number of crashes and also positively impact the environment

Ahead of the awareness week in November the charity is calling on all road users to make the ‘Brake Pledge’ by filling in an online form and sharing it with others.

According to Brake, 470 people are killed or seriously injured on the roads every week. Recent statistics from the Department for Transport found that there were 1,780 road deaths between September 2014 and 2015, an increase of 3% on the year before.

David Robinson, a serious injury solicitor at Thompsons Solicitors, said: “Motorists have a responsibility to drive with care and caution and Brake’s pledge highlights essential information that can help drivers stay safe on the roads.

“If all road users adopted Brake’s pledge, the number of needless deaths on our roads would likely be far fewer, yet there are still drivers who put themselves, and others, at risk of death or serious injury by breaking the law and driving recklessly.

“The government must ensure valuable initiatives such as Brake’s are properly supported in order to continue educating drivers about road safety and risks, while ensuring police forces are properly resourced to apprehend those who choose to ignore such advice.”