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

  • IAM RoadSmart calls for joined up thinking on road safety
    October 12, 2016
    Action is needed from across government departments to reverse the trend of flat-lining road deaths, according to new research from UK road safety charity IAM RoadSmart, which says reducing these deaths would in turn offer a large saving to the public purse. The new report, Evaluating the costs of incidents from the public sector perspective, is the first attempt to update the formula for death and injury cost figures since the 1990s. It is also the first time anyone has highlighted the costs to the publ
  • Road design as a primary aid to speed enforcement?
    January 30, 2012
    Letty Aarts, senior researcher, SWOV institute for road safety research, the Netherlands, discusses how road design can act as a primary aid to speed enforcement
  • Europe’s EasyWay project accommodates political requirements
    May 29, 2013
    The EasyWay project has evolved to take account of political developments at the European level. By Jason Barnes The European Union’s (EU’s) EasyWay ITS deployment project has its roots in the ambitions of former European Commission President Jacques Delors with regard to truly international networks for energy, information and for transport. Definition of what became known as the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) began back in 1994 with seven working groups. They produced an R&D and policy framework
  • High-tech road studs can help tackle accident trend
    October 3, 2014
    According to road safety engineer Alan Vass of the Traffic and Road Safety section of Ayrshire Roads Alliance in Scotland, LED road studs have contributed to a 100 per cent reduction in incidents on a stretch of the A719 road in the county. Vass says the active studs, which use LED and solar technology to create delineation shown to be far more effective than traditional retro-reflective studs, could hold the key to a brighter future. He said: “There had been a number of accidents on the A719 near Wat