Across the country over 250,000 people have been killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads in the past ten years.
Ahead of the Chancellor’s budget, the Road Safety Foundation are calling on the Government for an immediate injection of £200 million to tackle the high risk road sections.
In collaboration with Ageas, the Foundation have this week revealed some of the country’s most dangerous roads and they include some on the Isle of Wight (see report).
The Island’s riskiest roads
The A3055, which starts in Freshwater and swings down along to the south coast and then up the east coast to Ryde has been named as ‘High Risk’.
The A3054 which travels from Freshwater to Ryde across the northern part of the Island was ranked as ‘Medium-High Risk’ and the A3056 from Lake to Arreton was ranked ‘Medium Risk’.
Dr Suzy Charman, Research Director at the Road Safety Foundation said,
“Half of all Britain’s road deaths are concentrated on just 10% of the road network – the motorways and ‘A’ roads outside urban cores. This annual report maps and analyses the risks of death and serious injury on this network where so much loss of life and economic cost is concentrated.
“The largest single cause of death on this network is from vehicles running off the road. Brutal crashes at junctions are the largest cause of serious injury.”
South East now riskiest region
Dr Charman went on to say,
“As the economy recovers following the financial crisis, crash costs are increasing across most of Britain. Only 1% of road sections improved during the survey period. The South East of England is now the riskiest region where risks rose by nearly 10%.”
Interactive Road Crash Index
Alongside the report, the Road Safety Foundation and Ageas have launched a new interactive Road Crash Index.
This allows you to look up how all counties ranks in recent safety improvement and see the cost of road crashes locally.
The Isle of Wight is clumped in with Hampshire making it difficult to understand the true stats just for the Island, but the figures are pretty sobering.
See the Road Crash Index.
Map © EuroRAP AISBL
Image: leehaywood under CC BY 2.0
