Safer Essex Road Partnership
The Safer Essex Roads Partnership (SERP) is a partnership between emergency services and councils in Essex who work together to reduce deaths and serious injuries on Essex roads.
The SERP partners are:
- Essex County Council
- Essex Police
- Essex County Fire and Rescue Service
- Southend City Council
- Thurrock Council
- Highways England
- East of England Ambulance Service Trust
- Essex & Herts Air Ambulance Trust
- The Safer Roads Foundation
We work together to improve the effectiveness of education and intervention and also promote responsible road behaviour.
We recognise we have a key role to play in preventing road traffic collisions and the damage to human life. This is just as important to us as working to reduce fire-related deaths and injuries through prevention and protection work.
Our activities in road traffic collision reduction focus on specific interventions, campaigns, schemes and initiatives which are designed to change people’s driving behaviour and reduce death and injury caused by road traffic-related incidents.
Responding to road traffic collisions will always be a major part of what we do as an emergency service, but with effective educational activity and promotional campaigns, we aim to reduce fatalities and serious injuries.
Community Speed Watch
Community Speed Watch is a traffic monitoring scheme supported by partners within SERP. It is delivered in communities by dedicated volunteers who feel passionately about road safety in their area.
The Volunteers monitor the speed of passing vehicles using a hand-held speed detection device and record the details of vehicles which are exceeding the speed limit by around 10%.
These details are passed to the Police, who will issue a letter to the vehicle owner, advising them of the dangers of speeding, and reminding them of the law.
Vision Zero is the ambition to eliminate deaths and serious injuries on Essex roads by 2040.
Whilst considerable success has been made in recent years, there were still 47 deaths and 736 serious injuries recorded in Essex during 2021.
This is too many.
We cannot achieve this ambition alone. We need the support of the whole community – which includes all road users and businesses.
However we use the roads in Essex – whether we drive, walk, cycle, scoot or travel on horseback – each and every one of us has an important role to play in sharing the road safely.
Progress towards Vision Zero can be achieved through the ‘Safe System’ approach. This approach accepts human error but requires everyone to understand their role in making the system work safely.
The Safe System is designed so that when people do make mistakes, any resulting impact forces are low enough to avoid death or serious injury.
These measures are split into five layers of protection:
- Safe speeds
- Safe vehicles
- Safe road use
- Safe roads and roadside
- Post collision response
