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

  • Urgent action needed as drink-drive figures stall, says Brake
    August 5, 2016
    UK road safety charity Brake is calling on the government to take urgent action after figures released by the Department for Transport (DfT) show little change in the number of people killed because of drink-driving. Government figures reveal that the number of deaths involving a driver under the influence of alcohol was 240 in 2014. That figure has been consistently been reported since 2010 and looks set to continue if the provisional estimate for the 2015 figures proves to be accurate (200-290 killed).
  • World Bank funding to accelerate highway development in India
    November 1, 2013
    The World Bank has approved a US$500 million loan for the National Highways Interconnectivity Improvement Project in India to improve the national highway network’s connectivity with economically deprived and remote areas. The project will focus on three low-income states, Rajasthan, Bihar and Orissa, and on less developed regions in Karnataka and West Bengal.
  • Road safety - the challenge ahead
    April 25, 2012
    More than 1.3 million people die in road accidents each year. If nothing is done, this already chilling figure risks to rise to 1.9 million deaths per year. Around 90 per cent of road fatalities occur in emerging and developing countries. Here, the mixture of population growth and higher numbers of vehicles due to rising incomes are proving a deadly combination, as infrastructure and regulatory environment have difficulty keeping pace.
  • IAM responds to report on decrease in UK road casualties
    November 5, 2015
    The UK Institute of Advanced Motorists has responded to the Department for Transport report, Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain: quarterly provisional estimates Q2 2015, which claims that there were 1,700 road deaths in the year ending June 2015, down by two per cent compared with the year ending June 2014. Neil Greig, IAM director of policy and research said: “It is indeed good news to see that in spite of an increase in volume of traffic by 2.3 per cent that the numbers of casualties has falle