LIVES could be saved with increased commitment to road safety, experts said at the launch of a new campaign.

Councillors and police have vowed to reduce the number of road deaths at a meeting of the Lancashire Road Safety Forum on Friday (Nov 14).

And they have a huge task ahead of them as senior principal engineer for the council Peter Andrews pointed out when he described the shocking figures for 1996 when nearly 10,000 people were killed or injured.

He said: "It takes a death of someone like a princess to reach the national press, yet I wonder how many people realise accidents like this are a daily occurrence.

"Anyone with children will know if they break something they say 'never mind it's just an accident'. This conditioning is taken into adult life and road accidents are often viewed as being unavoidable. "We know different. We know that in 95 per cent of accidents there's some element of human error involved."

Under the banner Changing Attitudes - Making Commitment, they listened to speeches and took part in workshops to see what is needed to cut the number of accidents. County surveyor Graham Harding talked of dividing the county into three new Area Action Groups to try to solve the problem.

Mr Harding said: "The outcome will only be as good as the input we all give. It's increasingly important that we see it as a multi-agency approach."

Lancashire Road Safety Forum met at the Wellington Park Conference Centre in Leyland, and will meet annually from now on.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.