UK Road Safety Figures Down
Permalink: UK Road Safety Figures Down
Figures released by the Department for Transport have shown that casualties on
UK roads have dropped by 5% in the last year.
Despite the positive figures, though, the
UK is well behind other European Union countries when it comes to improving road safety. Currently there are around 40,000 deaths on European roads and the EU aims to reduce this to 25,000 by 2010. A report by the European Transport Safety Council has ranked 27 countries based on improvement in road safety between 2001 and 2005 and the
UK came in 20th with a drop in deaths of just 7%.
Top of the table was
France, where a 35% reduction was achieved in the same period.
The report points to improved speed management as the key factor, stating that on average a 1% reduction in the mean speed of traffic leads to a 4% reduction in deaths. The
UK performed better in the Council’s report on seat belt wearing – placing fifth as over 90% of motorists were found to comply with the law.
Professor Richard Allsop, Chairman of the Road Safety PIN which produced the report, said: “The PIN rankings show that some countries are good in one area, others in another.
Europe’s ambitious target of halving road deaths within a decade can only be reached if all countries learn from one another’s experiences.â€
