The number of people killed on Britain’s roads in 2012 fell to the lowest level since records began in 1926, according to statistics published last week by the DfT.
The number of people seriously injured also fell by 0.4% (from 23,122 in 2011 to 23,039 in 2012). This figure is 15% lower than the 2005-09 average.
However, the number of cyclists killed rose by 10% from 107 in 2011 to 118 in 2012.
Total reported child causalities (ages 0-15 years) fell by 11% to 17,251 in 2012. The number of children killed or seriously injured also fell, decreasing by 6% to 2,272 in 2012 from 2,412 in 2011.
A total of 145,571 personal-injury road collisions were reported to the police in 2012, 4% lower than in 2011.
Vehicle traffic levels have remained broadly stable for the second year running, though there was a small fall of 0.4% between 2011 and 2012.
Commenting on the figures, Neil Greig, IAM director of policy and research, said: “IAM welcomes a return to the long-term improvements in road safety that the UK has been rightly recognised for. Last year was a clear warning for government that complacency in road safety cost lives.
“The IAM has always warned that failing to match investment in segregated facilities with the growing numbers of cyclists would lead to an increase in death and serious injury and this worrying trend continues. A 10% increase in cycling deaths in a year when the weather suppressed cycling trips is a real red danger signal that simply cannot be ignored.”
Olly – please read the DfT annual reports which estimate that only 1 in every 3.5 serious injuries are ever made known to the police. And that this is 24% down from the 1 in 2.7 it was perhaps 10 years ago.
Idris Francis Fight Back With Facts Petersfield
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The DfT are comparing reported figures year on year, so there is a consistency with that; yes fatals are recorded accurately, and I am sure that serious also are very accurate. Many ‘reported’ to insurance companies are as a result of the claims culture we seem to have these days since solicitors were allowed to advertise and chase ambulances. Govt also discourage reporting damage only collisions from which a number of these injuries seem to appear from.
Olly, Lancs
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Idris and Rod
You have both articulated your very different views well – can I suggest that we leave it there for now. Thanks both.
Nick Rawlings, editor, Road Safety GB newsfeed
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Idris
And a gentle hint to you is that some of us wish to make our communities better places for our children and grandchildren to grow up in. We wish them to have the same wider area of independent mobility as in many European countries and levels of active travel and health to match.
Many of us see and recognise the benefits of motorised transport, but that doesn’t stop us taking an objective look at how we can collectively change our behaviour to minimise the disbenefits.
Rod King, Cheshire 20’s Plenty for Us
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Look on the bright side of life Rod! 100 years ago expectation of life was 40, now it’s 85 going on 100. Then 250,000 children died, large numbers from diseases transmitted via horse emissions. Now its 2,500 of whom perhaps 100 die on the roads and fewer than that from vehicle emissions.
A gentle hint to Rod – every ledger has two sides, plus and minus, cost and benefit, profit and loss. By any imaginable accounting method motor vehicles have brought massively greater benefits than costs – and for the record, transport-related deaths are substantially lower than they were in 1850 when pedestrians fell into canals, rides of horses or stagecoaches and hardly anyone went further from home than half the distance they could walk in a day.
Idris Francis Fight Back With Facts Petersfield
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IAM: “Last year was a clear warning for government that complacency in road safety cost lives”. Nonsense, 2011 was a blip as I and many others said at the time, nothing to do with “complacency or funding” neither of which changed at all, yet a 8% fall in K. Dave Finney is right, the only point to add is that recent steep falls were primarily due to the state of the economy, and the way worried people are more careful including when driving.
Idris Francis Fight Back With Facts Petersfield
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Of course road induced early deaths and harm extend far beyond those actually killed or injured on the roads. In the journal Environmental Science and Technology, MIT researchers report that emissions from cars, trucks, planes and powerplants cause 13,000 premature deaths in the United Kingdom each year.
See http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/air-pollution-deaths-united-kingdom-0420.html
It really does beg the question as to how many more premature deaths will be induced from capacity take-up as a result of the government’s new road building program. Plus whether road safety aspirations should not also be extended to the effects of motorised transport on public health.
Rod King, Cheshire 20’s Plenty for Us
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Hugh makes an excellent point. Police stats19 is the best data for where, when and why collisions occur. Stats19 is also very reliable for numbers of fatalities but the majority of serious and slight injuries are not recorded. Stats19 therefore cannot be relied upon for overall trends (BTW, this is no criticism of the Police, they produce excellent data with limited resources).
Every genuine serious injury should appear in the hospital stats and, if resulting from road traffic collisions, they are recorded as such. The number that stay in hospital more than 2 days should be a far more reliable indicator of serious injury trends. At the very least, both data sets (stats19 and hospital) should be presented together.
We need good quality evidence of what factors contributed and what factors hindered the fall in deaths but, overall, road deaths falling to an all-time low is excellent news.
Dave Finney, Slough
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Honor: I aaccept that it is the best data we have available, but would strongly question whether it is ‘statistically valid’. How can one say whether the level of reporting to the Police is ‘consistent’ if we don’t know how many accidents have ACTUALLY occured in the first place?
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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A further thought (with the editor’s permission) …the implication of the fact that there may be four times as many injury accidents than records are held for is that the causation factors and other associated data related to road accidents as reported in STATS19 in the UK is no longer valid. If you then add on the number of damage only accidents, the total number of all road accident a year in the UK – at best a guestimate – is therefore about 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 but we only have records apparently of 195,000 accidents, so when it comes to analysis of causation factors, it would seem we are only able to work from data from one twentieth of actual accidents – or 5%!
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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The only data that we currently have in a single, usable format is from police reports. The NHS data and Insurance data are in all sorts of different systems asking different questions for different purposes, none of which are aimed at informing highways design or education. Even the questions asked differ hugely so they do not, at the moment, form a single national data base that we can just plug into.
There is a new initiative just launched through Roger Carter, between the main agencies involved to try to address this complicated problem. It will take time and we don’t yet know what is achievable but we and all the other main bodies are signed up and working together on this.
Meanwhile, the level of reporting to the police appears to be consistent so it is reasonable to assess trends and changes year on year from that data. It may not be the whole picture but it does enable us to compare like with like from year to year so is statistically valid and constitutes the best data that is currently available.
Honor Byford, Vice Chair, Road Safety GB
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Further to last posting, if the Dft think that the actual number of road traffic casualties IS in the region of 730,000 why mislead people by saying it’s a lot less i.e 195.000? It’s not their fault if so many are un-reported, but as the Dft is the Government authority in these matters why not paint the truer picture?
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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This is based on all casualties reported to the Police, (195,723 apparently) however, within the body of the Dft report, is the acknowledgement that the probable total number of road traffic accident casualties – taking into account those NOT reported to the Police – is er…approximately 730,000! Therefore it’s actually impossible to conclude whether things are better, worse or the same. The only sure thing is that there are less fatalities, but the downside for these survivors is the possibility of a lifetime with a devastating disability.
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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