Brake announces this year’s theme for Road Safety Awareness Week
Someone is killed or injured on British roads every 20 minutes. This sobering statistic is one of the key messages behind Road Safety Awareness week, which aims to bring communities, schools and organisations together to demand (and initiate) action in improving the safety of our roads. It’s a cause we can keenly get behind here at Vision Techniques, as many of our vehicle safety products are made with exactly this aim in mind. If you’re not too familiar with Road Safety Awareness Week though, allow us to give you a bit of an insight into what it’s all about – as well as what you can do!
What is Road Safety Awareness Week?
Road Safety Awareness Week is a national campaign founded and run by Brake the UK’s leading road safety charity. In fact, it’s the biggest road safety awareness event in the whole United Kingdom. Every year, they announce a new theme for Road Safety Awareness Week – in 2018, it was Bike Smart, which was neatly aligned with our own range of cyclist safety products. Running from the 18-24th of November, the theme for this year is Step Up for Safe Streets. In the words of the Brake team, it encourages everyone to “step up, learn about, shout about, and celebrate design-led solutions which can enable everyone to get around in safe and healthy ways”.
The campaign calls on everyone to ‘step up’ to eliminate road casualties in the following ways:
By encouraging everyone to use roads safely, minimise their time driving, and shout out for design-led solutions
Incentivising schools to educate their pupils on how they can ensure the safety of themselves and their peers on UK roads, and encourage them to demand action from others
Urging emergency service professionals to ‘step up’ and highlight the roles they personally play in helping to keep the general public safe
Demanding lawmakers to develop and mandate design-led solutions specifically geared towards reducing (and ultimately eliminating) road casualties
Inspiring organisations and employers to overhaul their own policies and procedures, exploring new ways to improve safety for their drivers, other road users, and pedestrians
You can register with Brake to run a road safety event, and they’ll send you an electronic pack to aid you in its delivery. We’re proud to help wherever we can here at Vision Techniques, but we’re pleased to say that if you find yourself in this last category, we’re particularly well-equipped to help you.
How we can help you improve the safety of your fleet
With decades of experience behind us, here on our site we’ve got a comprehensive range of vehicle safety products, many of which we’ve designed ourselves. (Perfect examples of design-led solutions!) Some of our most useful products include:
Turnaware – cyclist safety system
VT TurnAware is a blind spot camera system that uses video analytics and motion sensor software to detect cyclists and pedestrians moving towards the vehicle, and will warn the driver of their approach. This system is compliant with FORS.
An effective way of detecting approaching hazards is crucial to preventing accidents involving left turns with cyclists and vulnerable road users.
Developed specifically for when drivers need to make left turns, this blind spot camera system uses images and motion sensors software to detect cyclists and pedestrians moving towards the vehicle, and will warn the driver of their approach.
VT TurnAware gives the driver plenty of time to see and react to any approaching danger. Video analytics improves on current detection systems by visualising any hazard through the monitor, helping the driver to judge any situation. The VT TurnAware system can integrate with VT Record system so that detected objects trigger a tagged recording for later review and analysis.
TurnSafe – cyclist detection
Along with pedestrians, cyclists are some of the smallest and most vulnerable road users in the UK, which means collisions with HGVs can have life-changing consequences. We have a range of TurnSafe cyclist safety products to prevent those sorts of scenarios here at Vision Techniques, encompassing cameras, alarms and radars that all help to increase the driver’s awareness of the area immediately surrounding them, while making their intentions clearer to cyclists and surrounding road users.
Vehicle Cameras
Vision Techniques offers vehicle camera systems covering every angle of the vehicle – so whatever your vehicle or application, we have something to suit. The full range is completely modular, and every product has been designed to integrate with all our existing vehicle safety systems. Our Alpha range is perfect for integration with our VT Monitors and VT Record, however, our range is extensive so if you have a specialist application please contact our team with your requirements and we will be happy to advise you. This is just a sample of the sorts of products we have in stock, however. You can explore our full range here, to find even more specific products that would be perfectly suited to your fleet. If you’ve got any questions or need any advice from a member of our team, feel free to give us a call on 01254 679 717. We’re here to help!