Roads to ruin: 3,200 miles of major routes ‘dangerous’
ALMOST 3,200 miles of Britain’s main roads are too dangerous, according to a report.
An audit by the Road Safety Foundation has warned just over 10 per cent of the length of A-roads and motorways across Britain are ‘unacceptably higher risk’. Anyone travelling these routes is almost 40 times as likely to be involved in a fatal or serious crash than on safe roads.
Most of the dangerous roads – around 2,750 miles’ worth – are local routes in England overseen by town halls. Users are more than four times as likely to be in a serious or fatal crash than travellers on motorways and A-roads cared for by the government-backed Highways England.
All ten of Britain’s most perilous rural A-roads are single carriageways where drivers are at risk from dangerous overtaking and head-on collisions.
The most perilous was a seven-and-ahalf mile stretch of the A5004, running through the Peak District in Derbyshire, on which there were 16 fatal and serious crashes between 2012 and 2017. The second
‘Head-on collisions’
most accident prone is the A3055 on the Isle of Wight between the A3054 near Freshwater and Ryde.
Over the same six-year period there were 65 fatal or serious crashes on this 30-mile stretch. More than half of crashes on the two most dangerous roads involved motorcyclists.
The report looked at number of crashes, length of road and volume of traffic. It did not analyse what made roads dangerous.
In total, 4,400 fatal and serious crashes occurred on the most dangerous ten routes between 2012 and 2017. Some 1,793 people were killed on Britain’s roads in 2017. The report, backed by insurer Ageas, pointed out this figure ‘has changed little’ since 2011 despite cars become safer.
It claimed investment of £117million on dangerous roads would prevent 3,450 deaths and serious injuries over the next 20 years. Kate Fuller, of the Road Safety Foundation said: ‘So much of our travel is on these intensely used networks that any flaw in their in-built safety means tragedy sooner rather than later.’