TT 2008 road safety campaign under scrutiny

The Manx Herald has learned that the arguably ‘less-than-successful’ 2008 TT road safety campaign is due to be subjected to a thorough ‘post-mortem’ over the next few weeks.

Apparently the police have several meetings planned this week to discuss the effectiveness of the campaign; and it is hoped that feed-back from these meetings will be provided in due course.

Department of Transport, Road Safety Manager, Gordon Edwards told the Manx Herald that it was too early for the DOT to judge how successful the campaign had been as, firstly, they have to wait 28 days to ensure the statistics, on the consequences of traffic accidents, are correct. For example, accident victims who subsequently die within 28 days of their accident are counted in to the statistics for deaths.

In addition, the Road Safety Unit have 2000 completed questionnaires, with thousands of pieces of data, collected at the various TT events their ‘road-show’ attended, to collate before they will be able to report to the Department. It is intended that this work will be completed by the end of July; and it is expected that a press release will follow detailing some of the issues considered by the Department.

The Questionnaire, asked a series of questions about the road safety campaign, and it is hoped that the Department will be able to assess how effect they were at getting this year’s road safety message to visitors and locals.