Road travel could be as safe as on rail and air, charity says

Travelling by road could be as safe as on rail and air, according to a report from the Road Safety Foundation.

The charity’s analysis of crashes on the British network of motorways and A roads, found that road deaths are now 10 times greater than all deaths in all workplaces added together.

It believes the same systematic approach to measuring and managing risks needs to be applied to roads as that taken by industries ranging from medicine to mining as well as aviation and rail, where deaths are far less frequent.

Some key facts in the report:

In the South East, risk is over 80% higher than the risk for the network in the West Midlands, the English region with the lowest rate of death and serious injury.

The cost of road crashes in Hampshire, Kent and Essex each exceed £0.5 billion over the three year data period 2012-14.

The largest single cause of death is running off the road (29%); the largest cause of serious injury is at junctions (33%).

An estimated 2% of total GDP is lost in road crashes.

Highways England handles the biggest single crash costs of any authority: £2.1 billion over the three year period.

“A lifetime of care for a single trauma victim can cost more than £20m. This report identifies the authorities with high costs from road crashes, and shows how risks can be reduced and lives saved with economic returns that are higher, quicker and more certain than from most projects competing for funds.

“We can now identify roads where risk is 20-times higher on some roads than others; and regions where the risk of death and serious injury on the main roads might be twice that of another,” said Lord Whitty, Road Safety Foundation chairman.