A major study of Britain’s 28,000 numbered roads and motorways has revealed that over half of the A-road network rated either neutral or poor in terms of safety. The story was reported on the BBC website.
The study, conducted by the European road assessment programme (EuroRAP) found that in addition to 58% of A-roads failing the assessment, a quarter of the motorway network was similarly found lacking when it came to safety. Single carriage A-roads attracted particular criticism from the experts who carried out the study; many were found to have poor signage and road markings, damaged road surfaces and poorly designed junctions, marking them out as road accident hot spots.
Some roads surveyed have had a persistently bad safety record, mainly winding roads in the Pennines such as the A537 from Macclesfield to Buxton which saw 27 fatal accidents in the past two years, mainly involving motorbikes as the route is popular with bikers. Eight out of ten roads judged “persistently higher risk” were in the Derbyshire and Yorkshire regions, corresponding with areas such as the Peak District and the North Yorkshire Moors.
Overall decline in road accident deaths
However it was not all bad news for British motorists, several roads had seen a marked improvement in their accident figures – in line with the overall decline in road accident deaths reported this week. One road which had seen a dramatic decline in the number of accidents was the road between the towns of Carmarthen and Llandovery in Wales, which had had major improvement works and had seen an 80% fall in the number of accidents as a result.
Most accidents (62%) were found to occur on the busy non-primary routes between the towns and villages of Britain, where, according to driving organisation the Institute for Advanced Motorists, poor road design meant small driving errors were more likely to lead to an accident. The IAM pointed out several improvements that could be made to these roads to cut the accident rates, including installing barriers along the centre of the road to prevent overtaking and widening the road at junctions to include a separate lane for vehicles turning right.