Commissioner secures funding for innovative road safety initiative

The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) has been granted a significant funding allocation of £65,000 by the Department for Transport (DfT) for a pioneering road safety project called Operation Journey.

The funding bid will facilitate the purchase of essential equipment aimed at enhancing road safety across the Humber region. The project will focus on dashcams for key road users, body cams for Community Speed Watch coordinators, and cycle cams for cyclists using our busiest routes. These measures aim to improve the effectiveness of existing Operation Snap and the local Community Speed Watch schemes.

Up to 350 dash cams will be purchased and we are working with a number of independent companies such as Nextbase and Chilli Tech to roll out this programme.

We will offer our key road users the possibility of providing a free-of-charge dashcam. There will be an application process to ensure we focus on the key road users who regularly use the road network and are willing to download dashcam footage to Operation Snap on a consistent basis where they identify inappropriate driving behaviour by other road users.

Bryn Brooker, Head of Marketing at Nextbase commented “we are really happy to be supporting the Operation Snap – journey cams in Humberside – this is a really exciting opportunity to make a real difference in peoples’ daily drives and improve road safety.”

Paul Bradley, Founder and Director of Chilli Technology said “We are proud to be working with Humberside Police and Crime Commissioner and the charity R-evolution in helping make the roads a safer place for cyclists.”

This is a collaborative approach with Lincolnshire OPCC, who are concurrently conducting a similar dash cam trial. This collaboration will enable a comprehensive evaluation of various strategies and their effectiveness in promoting road safety.

Police and Crime Commissioner Jonathan Evison said “In our region, we sadly lose too many lives on our roads every year with a significant number of life changing injuries. We must change driver behavior and make our roads safer. This initiative will mean there are more eyes on the road to catch bad driving and hopefully lead to prosecution. One death on our roads is one too many.”

The project is scheduled to run until July 2024 with an evaluation of the initiative being conducted by a third-party provider appointed by the DfT.

For more information about what the funding will provide - CLICK HERE 

Click here for more information on Operation Snap