Skip to main content

Report - How safe are you on Britain’s roads?

The 2014 report from the Road Safety foundation, How safe are you on Britain’s roads? claims that the majority of British road deaths are concentrated on just 10 per cent of the British road network, motorways and 'A' roads outside major urban areas. The report measures and maps the differing risk of death and serious injury road users face across this network, sometimes 20 times or more different. It also tracks which roads have improved, and those with persistent and unacceptable high risks. It highlig
November 27, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
The 2014 report from the 776 Road Safety foundation, How safe are you on Britain’s roads? claims that the majority of British road deaths are concentrated on just 10 per cent of the British road network, motorways and 'A' roads outside major urban areas. The report measures and maps the differing risk of death and serious injury road users face across this network, sometimes 20 times or more different.

It also tracks which roads have improved, and those with persistent and unacceptable high risks. It highlights roads where authorities have taken effective action. On 15 stretches of roads, low cost action such as road marking and improved signage has reduced serious crashes by 80 per cent, worth a staggering US$0.6 billion to the economy.

The report shows major differences not only between individual roads but between whole regions. The risks road users face overall on the major roads of the East Midlands are a startling two thirds higher than neighbouring West Midlands - greater than between many European countries.

Risk on the roads depends on the way we drive, the vehicles we drive and the roads we drive on. But, with similar vehicles and drivers, it is the in-built safety of the roads in the West Midlands that explains its better performance - more travel is done on safer roads. The motorways and single carriageways of the West Midlands have the greatest in-built safety of any region.

It is often neither difficult nor expensive to raise infrastructure safety. It brings high returns to the economy. It requires systematic measurement of risk. The in-built safety of the infrastructure of roads, like cars, is now measured worldwide.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Report finds 87 per cent of US drivers engage in unsafe driving behaviour
    March 4, 2016
    About 87 per cent of drivers in the US engaged in at least one risky behaviour while behind the wheel within the past month, according to latest research by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. This includes driving while distracted, impaired, drowsy, speeding, running red lights or not wearing a seat belt. These results come as nearly 33,000 Americans died in car crashes in 2014, and preliminary estimates project a nine percent increase in deaths for 2015. The report finds that one in three drivers ha
  • Need for balance on UK speed enforcement funding cuts
    February 2, 2012
    Trevor Ellis, Chairman of the ITS UK Enforcement Interest Group, considers the implications of the UK Government's decision to withdraw funding for road safety camera partnerships
  • Call for targeted safety measures to prevent road deaths among young drivers
    January 26, 2017
    Zero tolerance on drink driving, additional hazard perception training and graduated forms of licensing should become the norm to help tackle the risks faced by young drivers and motorcycle riders in Europe, according to the YEARS report (Young Europeans Acting for Road Safety. More than 3,800 young people (aged 18-24) are killed each year on EU roads – the biggest single cause of death for this age group. A report by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) and the UK Parliamentary Advisory Council
  • Enforcement a key part of the road safety solution
    January 31, 2012
    The Partnership for Advancing Road Safety is a new organisation set up in the US to push the national debate on speed and intersection safety, something which hitherto has been absent. Here, executive director David Kelly explains the organisation's work. With moves to address drink/drug driving and the wearing of seatbelts starting to prove successful in the US, the use of inappropriate speed and poor driving at intersections have become responsible for a proportionately greater number of the deaths and in