DfT and LARSOA join forces to further develop road safety newsfeed

The DfT and LARSOA have unveiled plans to work together to further enhance the road safety newsfeed delivered via the LARSOA website.

The newsfeed was established in June 2002 and achieved almost 50,000 hits in its first year of operation. On average, the newsfeed attracts approaching 1000 hits and 400 visitors each week, and is now widely recognised as the best source of news and information about road safety in the UK.

The newsfeed comprises two principal elements – a weekly summary of road safety news stories clipped from various sources and a monthly update of campaigns from across the UK.

"The DfT’s involvement means that we will be increasing the frequency of the members’ news update to weekly instead of monthly – and we know from the visitor numbers that the members news is the big attraction of the site," explains Nick Rawlings, the newsfeed editor.

The DfT plans to use the newsfeed to keep road safety professionals abreast with news about forthcoming campaigns and initiatives. "We are keen to improve our communications with road safety practitioners and the LARSOA website has established itself and an excellent medium for this purpose," says Tony Allsworth, the department’s head of publicity. "We will be providing a weekly bulletin which will appear along with the other news on the site."