In the 1980s Nick Ross produced and directed an influential and much-repeated TV inquiry, The Biggest Epidemic of Our Times, which was widely credited with transforming public attitudes and public policy. Three decades later a BBC science series described it as the broadcast that ‘would transform road safety’ and which ‘led to an historic victory in the struggle to save lives’ (Dallas Campbell, A Horizon Guide to Car Crashes, BBC4, 9pm, 21 October 2013). According to one commentator the effects of Ross’s subsequent political campaigning were so profound that, “in significant consequence British mortality rates of people under 50 are among the lowest in the world” (Morgan, Adam, Eating The Big Fish, Wiley, London, 2009, pp134-136).
The most tangible achievement was when roads minister Peter Bottomley formally accepted Ross’s challenge to set government targets to cut fatalities (the first of which – to kill 2,000 by 2000 – would require a two-thirds cut from more than 6,000 deaths a year). Others also signed up to the idea including the Institute of Highway Engineers. Road deaths plummeted and by 1999 Great Britain had the safest roads in Europe apart from Sweden. By 2017 fatalities were down to 1,710, the lowest level since records began in 1926.
This downward trend came to a halt when the government abandoned targets in 2011. In 2016 Ross met ministers to propose a new targeted approach, and in later years, together with two former roads ministers (Peter Bottomoley and Steve Norris), he pressed for a new national road safety campaign, but no avail. He has long been critical of police inquiries into serious collisions because they focus on prosecution rather than on acquiring lessons to prevent future accidents, and has called for the creation of a road accident organisation modelled on the long-establishd principles of air crash investigations.
Ross presented a long-running peak-time series So You Think You’re a Good Driver on BBC One. He chaired RoSPA’s national Road Safety Committee, and was for many years President of the London Road Safety Council. He is a Vice President of the Institute of Advanced Motorists and continues to lobby at road safety conferences in the UK and internationally.
