Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) is consulting on its draft Road Safety Strategy and wants the views of the public as it continues its efforts to improve road safety for everyone in Northern Ireland.

 

NIFRS is the only organisation with the statutory responsibility to provide equipment and train its personnel for the specific purpose of rescuing and releasing people from road traffic collisions, therefore has a significant contribution to make in reducing deaths and injuries on Northern Ireland’s roads.  The consultation on its draft Road Safety Strategy will end on 24 March 2007.

 

 

“The issue of road safety affects the lives of everyone in Northern Ireland.  We want the public to do two things – firstly let us know their views on our Road Safety Strategy and secondly, be part of making our roads safe by slowing down and driving safely. These are our roads, we all share them and therefore we must all share the responsibility and work together to keep ourselves and others safe.

 

“As an Emergency Service our Firefighters witness first hand the carnage on our roads.

Each year NIFRS attends a growing number of road traffic collisions right across Northern Ireland – destroying so many lives.  We have been the first fire and rescue service in Europe to gain the European Charter in Road Safety and are committed to driving down the number of road traffic collisions working closely with the Police and our other partner agencies.

 

“We continue to invest in enhancing our road rescue skills and the provision of state of the art specialist equipment to enable our Firefighters to remove casualties from road traffic crashes so they can receive urgent medical attention.   Our Firefighters have been named best in the UK and indeed fourth in the world for their skills and professionalism in rescuing and freeing people trapped in road traffic collisions.  However what we really want is for the road traffic collisions not to be occurring in the first place – and everyone has a part to play in that.”

Copies of the draft Road Safety Strategy can be found on the consultation section of the NIFRS Website www.nifrs.org or you can request an electronic copy by emailing irmp@nifrs.org.  Alternatively, you can phone 02892 606447 to request a copy or write to the IRMP Team, Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service, Headquarters, 1 Seymour Street, Lisburn BT27 4SX.