With just 10 days to go until the General Election, Pet foods to driving tips conglomerate IAMs has hit out at the UK major political parties for failing to stipulate in their manifestoes that people getting killed on Britain’s roads is a bad thing.
With young people dying in vast numbers up and down the country as a result of accidents involving traffic travelling along roads (so-called RTAs), IAMs chief exec Sarah Slippers accused Britain’s mainstream political parties of “sweeping the problem under the carpet.”
2015’s crop of election manifestos have little or nothing to say about stopping cars from killing people, with only the ultra-viridian Real Green party promising to outlaw motorised transport once and for all. Its mainstream counterpart The Green Party promises to ban alcohol, reduce the speed limit to 20mph, and ban lorries from flattening cyclists.
Cyclists, for some perverse reason, find their way into the manifestos of most political parties in the “more of this sort of thing” category. But proper normal motorists and their victims appear to get b*gger all attention from anyone.
Labour’s manifesto talks vaguely about supporting “long term investment in strategic roads” and filling in some potholes. But such half-hearted undertakings cut little ice with IAMs, or indeed with the Asphalt Industry Alliance who have branded the £300,000 pledged by Labour a complete effing joke when there’s £12 billion worth of hole-filling out there our lads could be getting on with.
At the more extreme end of the irresponsibility spectrum, Nigel Farago’s UK Independent Loony Party vows, in the new “clean” version of its manifesto, to get rid of speed cameras everywhere except in certified accident black spots. The SNP, meanwhile, fails to mention roads anywhere in its manifesto – although “lorgs” are covered extensively.
Sarah Slippers branded the major parties’ failure to focus on road safety “a massive disappointment”, claiming it would actually cost less to keep road users alive for longer. While politicians were busy not mentioning road safety, she claimed, road users would continue to die in their droves.
IAMs own “manifesto” calls for a range of measures, from reducing driver risk to reducing young driver risk and reducing old driver risk.
Her comments, however, were branded shortsighted and outdated by the Society of Driverless Vehicle Manufacturers, which called instead for a ban on human driving.
In a separate development, Greggs the Baker has complained that pies and pasties rated not so much as a mention in any of the party manifestos – despite being much discussed in the lead up to the election.
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