A new road safety strategy will be published later this year.

Home Affairs Minister Bill Malarkey told Tynwald last week about the plan.

He was responding to the latest in a series of questions about road safety from Bill Shimmins (Middle).

Previously, Mr Shimmins has been told that there can be no meaningful comparisons of accident statistics between the UK and the Isle of Man because of the different methods used and the influence of motorsport.

However, Mr Malarkey said last week that work was taking place to ensure more meaningful data was collected.

A road safety partnership had been created to help develop a ’clear and comprehensive’ strategy, based on the ’safer system’ approached endorsed by the World Health Organisation. It would also address ’specifically’ the needs of the Isle of Man in relation to motorsport and the extra visitors it brings.

Mr Malarkey said the strategy would be published later this year. Road user groups would be consulted.

Reaching accident reduction targets, he said, would ’require significant effort from the whole public, not just motorists and cyclists but all involved in using roads’.

Mr Shimmins said: ’A review of road safety is long overdue, and it is great to see the "safer system" methodology is being adopted, given the positive results it has had elsewhere in Europe.’

Bill Henderson MLC called for road safety ’hot spots’ to be identified and remarked that jumping red lights had become ’quite popular these days’.

Mr Malarkey said his department was already working closely with the Department of Infrastructure and all factors of road safety were being considered.

’This is not something we are going to throw together overnight,’ he added.

Mr Shimmins asked Mr Malarkey where road safety ranked in the police’s list of priorities. The minister said it was on equal status with issues such as financial crime, drugs and safeguarding people, as part of a wider ’safer society’ objective outlined in the chief constable’s annual report.

In response to a Tynwald question last month, Mr Malarkey admitted he could not provide a ’meaningful’ rate for the number of people killed or seriously injured in accidents in the Isle of Man, to compare with other jurisdictions.

He said there were issues with data collection and complications over the common definition of ’serious injury’ and the follow-up of injuries after a victim attended hospital.