Quoted in The Times yesterday, Owen Paterson, shadow roads minister said: "Instead of the State laying down the rules, we need to give responsibility back to road users." Safe Speed says that this is a crucial road safety 'truth'.

Individual responsibility is one of the three road safety key factors that have been squandered by recent policy. The other two are 'skills' and 'attitudes'.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "We have to get back to road safety policies which recognise and develop the three key safety factors - skills, attitudes and responsibilities. Road safety is a psychology subject, not a physics subject."

"Widely applied policies based on the idea that 'speed kills' have tended to remove individual responsibility, worsen attitudes and de-skill the driving process. This is a deadly mistake that has, on average, made drivers worse and cost thousands of lives.[1]"

"I'm looking forwards to the Conservative's green paper and have my fingers crossed that it will properly recognise the true key road safety factors."

For the second time in two days The Times reports on the importance of individual responsibility on our roads. Martin Cassini proposes that traffic lights should be removed because they replace skilled and responsible behaviour with inferior state controlled behaviour.

Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign(www.safespeed.org.uk) said: "The argument for individual responsibility lies at the core of the Safe Speed campaign - and so it should - our road safety system is founded on it. The tragedy is that Department for Transport has been imposing ever tighter controls and restrictions on road use - cameras, humps, speed limit reductions, countless thousands of signs, and massive needless enforcement of regulations - these are billion pound policies that have actually made matters worse."

"But there are ever growing demands for policies that develop and encourage individual responsibility. It's not that we 'should trust drivers more' instead we need such policies to get the best possible performance out of our road users; we need to appeal to natural behaviour and build on natural strengths."

"We won't get road safety back on track until we have 'psychologically sound'policies that play to human strengths."