COUNCIL chiefs have vowed to work in partnership to tackle road deaths and dangerous driving in Blackburn and Darwen.

The message came as Blackburn with Darwen Council launched its road safety strategy at Blackburn Fire Station.

Cllr Mohammed Khan, leader of Blackburn Darwen Council which supports the Lancashire Telegraph’s “Stop The Madness” campaign, said the authority was committed to reducing fatalities and serious injuries on the region’s roads.

Cllr Khan said: “The Council is absolutely committed to reducing the number of people killed or injured on our roads. We have invested in programmes to raise awareness of the importance of road safety, we have used our enforcement powers to tackle bad parking and we have invested in schemes which improve the layout of roads to make them safer, we’ve done this amongst other initiatives and partnership campaigns.

“Sadly last year three people lost their lives and 140 were seriously injured.

“Such tragedies have a huge, devastating impact not just on families but also on the wider community and I have seen first-hand the terrible effect they have.

“We can always do more and this strategy outlines what we need to do.

“At the heart of the strategy is partnership working. The Council cannot make the roads safer on its own. We must co-ordinate our efforts and work together to achieve our aims and everyone has a role to reduce the number of incidents on our roads and make our roads safer for all road users.”

As part of the strategy, the council’s director for adult services, neighbourhoods and community safety Sayed Osman said the authority would work alongside its public sector partners including, the police, fire service, schools, public health and children’s services, to “maximise efficiencies and work towards the same vision”.

Mr Osman said the priorities of the strategy are evidence, education, enforcement and engineers. He said evidence would see accident and “near miss” data analysed to identify high risk areas and groups to focus resources on. He said education would focus on arming road users and children with road safety knowledge and changing the attitudes of dangerous drivers. Enforcement will see the specific targetting of dangerous and unlawful behaviour, including dangerous parking and targeting drivers who hire high powered vehicles and the rental companies. Engineering will look at how road layouts can be altered to improve safety, Mr Osman said.

Andrew Wright, a police intelligence analyst, said fatalities and serious injuries were down in the borough by 10.9 per cent over the last 12 months but the force would not rest on its laurels.

Neil Hardman, station manager for Blackburn and Darwen Fire Stations, said the service was launching a road sense campaign which aimed to get every year six pupil in the district talking about road safety.