Governments must take the lead to reduce road death and serious injury
A report out today from The Road Safety Foundation and Ageas Insurance calls for two clear actions where the government can take an immediate lead to reduce the number of fatal and serious crashes and deliver high returns to society.
“How Safe Are You on Britain’s Main Road Networks?” says Government must set disciplined safety goals for the proposed Major Road Network (MRN) in line with those in place for the strategic road network; and it must release new investment through the successful Safer Road Fund to address 75 persistently higher risk roads.
Summary of findings:
- 60% of all deaths are concentrated on the 12.5% of road length surveyed
- The newly defined MRN has more than four times as much risk as Highways England’s network and needs similar disciplined safety goals as both are to be funded directly through Vehicle Excise Duty
- 75 persistently higher risk road sections are not yet being addressed through the Safer Roads Fund, including seven of those in the top 10 persistently higher risk rural roads
- The report calls for an immediate £117 million investment to prevent 3,450 fatal and serious injuries on persistently higher risk roads over the next 20 years
- An £83 million annual investment is needed over the next five years to address most of the unacceptably higher risk roads, preventing around 6,850 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years
- The report looks at the safety performance of the individual road networks managed by different authorities which together make up Britain’s main road network
- The A5004 in Derbyshire is named the most persistently higher risk road where eight crashes that resulted in death or serious injury happened in three years on just a 12km stretch of road
- The most improved road is the A11 between the A14 near Newmarket and the A134 north of Thetford
- The report takes the first steps in analysing risk on urban main roads
- The latest data is now available online for the public to check the roads in their areas via an interactive map
