Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Examples of work to date

To help you to improve your own safety on the roads, we have published a range of guidance for different groups of roadusers e.g.motorcyclists, HGV drivers, young women and disabled drivers

Some of our customers do not speak English. To ensure that safety guidance is communicated quickly and effectively, the Agency has also developed a phrase book which Traffic Officers can use at the road side. Key instructions and questions for customers are translated into 30 languages.

Our highly trained Traffic Officers follow procedures outlined in the Traffic Officer manual. Over 2006/07, the guidance for Traffic Officers when assisting disabled people on the network was reviewed. Disabled groups, both national and local, were consulted. The motorway is a hazardous environment, and the Agency's priority is safety for everyone. With this as a guiding principle, one of the many changes made related to use of emergency roadside telephones. People who are deaf or have a speech or hearing impairment cannot easily use telephones to contact us for help on the network, so the procedure was changed and now a silent call is interpreted as an SOS signal.  Please visit the Equality Impact Assessments page for further information.

As part of our continued commitment to better understanding our customers' needs, we have published a detailed guide to colleagues managing major projects on how to best engage with groups across the community. Approaches to Consultation provides a range of techniques from citizens' panels to vox pops encouraging staff to use tailored techniques to ensure under-represented groups have a genuine opportunity to shape the design of schemes.