(Driving lessons in Scarborough)
The latest EuroRAP results (EuroRAP 2008: GB Tracking Survey Results) provide a valuable tool for road safety professionals by highlighting the safety deficiencies of many of Britain’s main roads. They also confirm studies by the IAM Motoring Trust that show Britain's rural roads to be the biggest killers, and that more than half of deaths and serious injuries happen on single carriageway, relatively minor roads. “For too many young drivers and their passengers, rural roads are killers for which their driving tuition and driving tests may not have prepared them,” says IAM Trust Director, Neil Greig
“The IAM Trust study, Rural Roads – the biggest killer, shows that:
• More than 60 per cent of fatal and serious casualties happen on 60 and 70mph non-
• Two-
• A third of KSIs (killed and seriously injured) on rural roads are in cars driven by young drivers, twice as many as in cars with a driver over 60
• Young drivers have almost half of their KSI crashes in the evening/overnight on
rural roads, compared to a third for drivers in the 26-
• Males drivers dominate the rural roads KSI statistics – three quarters of car occupants killed or seriously injures on rural roads are in cars driven by male drivers; 95 per cent of motorcyclist KSIs are male, as are over 80 per cent of cyclists
• The most deadly roads are single carriageways – accounting for more than 80 per cent of rural road KSIs in England, and 90 per cent in Scotland and Wales
• Running off the road and hitting solid objects. such as a tree, or running into a ditch, account for 40 per cent of KSIs on rural roads
“Deaths on our roads have fallen below 3000, now we must lower the target to fewer
than 2000. Achieving a new lower target needs a greater focus on EuroRAP’s message
that we must make roads safer, and more forgiving, when crashes happen. Only when
we have five-
(Issued: 29th June 2008)
