All of us need to look out for each other

National Road Safety Week, organised by the charity Brake, is an opportunity to reflect on the impact of road crashes on the lives of hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

This year's theme is "Look Out For Each Other", with campaigners trying to challenge the sometimes antagonistic atmosphere between people in cars, buses, bikes, and on foot competing with each other for space, speed, and priority.

Brake points out that, regardless of how we choose to travel on any given day, we are really just people trying to get about our business.

It also argues that streets should be a place where everyone looks out for each other - especially the most vulnerable.

Safety on Brighton and Hove roads has been improving in recent years. Last year saw 200 fewer people injured or killed in collisions on our streets than in 2010 - with local hospital surgeons commenting on the decrease in severity of injuries.

This is the result of our policies to make our streets safer. Research has shown that for every 1mph reduction in average speeds, crash rates fall by 5%.

So we have slowed traffic on many of our residential and shopping streets through introducing 20mph speed limits and traffic-calming measures.

We have also re-designed some of our most dangerous roads, junctions and crossings - including Seven Dials, Old Shoreham Road, Lewes Road, and East Street, to make them more people-friendly and safer.

Similar safety improvement work is underway on the Vogue Gyratory and Edward Street too.

Making physical changes helps make streets safer, but it's up to people travelling around the city to look out for each other.

This National Road Safety Week, we're supporting calls for people to look longer and taking it slow at junctions and bends, and giving others plenty of room - especially as the nights close in.

Only by putting safety first and being considerate to one another will the numbers of people hurt on our streets continue to fall.