A COUNCILLOR from the Forest has called for action to improve road safety in Gloucestershire with 14 people having died from road accidents in the county so far this year.

Cllr Graham Morgan (L, Cinderford) told county councillors that drivers are getting faster and faster with every generation at a meeting last Wednesday (May 18).

And civic leaders agreed the issue needs to be proactively managed, with an emphasis on preventing deaths and serious injuries, and it should not wait until tragedy strikes for changes to be made.

Councillors agreed to ask officers to provide a thorough briefing on recent accidents and their causes, and called on leaders to ensure that communities and all levels of governance are thoroughly consulted on a refreshed road safety policy.

Councillor Paul Hodgkinson (LD, Bourton on the Water and Northleach), who proposed the motion, also called for a policy of ongoing dialogue with local residents to see road safety measures proactively installed in their communities.

Cllr Morgan told the meeting: “People tailgating other people, impatient to get past them, and unbelievable speeds.

“This county council needs to do something different.

“We don’t want to go back to a situation in earlier years when we had horrific deaths of young people in the Forest.”

Some 96 serious injuries involving motor vehicles have also been reported in Gloucestershire in 2022, with the county’s record having actually worsened in the last decade.

Gloucestershire is now in the bottom 5 per cent of local authorities in Britain for reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured between 2011 and 2019.

Cllr Hodgkinson told the meeting: “Many lives are being lost on our roads and hundreds of other lives will never be the same again because of their injuries or the tragic loss of loved ones. Something has to change.

“We feel that rather than centralising this work and coming up with the same answers again, we need to go out to the communities, we need to ask them for their issues and help them. Because for too long this council has a policy of simply reacting to data.”