AA study highlights danger roads

31 May 2006

Deaths and serious injuries are ‘routine and predictable’ on some main roads, according to the AA, as it highlighted routes repeatedly identified as dangerous in the five years of EuroRap surveys.
Ten inter-urban roads in Northwest England, Yorkshire & Humber, the East Midlands and Scotland were named as routes where ‘there had been little or no change in the number of fatal and serious collisions’ since the first EuroRap survey, covering 1999.
AA Motoring Trust director Bert Morris said that the fact that many of the routes had been at the top of the list since its work began begged the question ‘are the responses of roads authorities to routine deaths and serious injuries proportional to the scale of the problem?’
Top of the ‘consistently higher-risk’ list – up to ten times more dangerous than the safest routes – were the A682 between Long Preston in North Yorkshire and junction 13 of the M65 in Lancashire followed by the A54 between Congleston and Buxton and the A61 linking Barnsley and Wakefield. The latter was the most dangerous when motorcycling accidents – which highway authorities have complained distort the figures – were discounted.
The likelihood of accidents through villages or town outskirts was much greater, with twice as many fatal or serious injury accidents per kilometre in built-up areas compared to those on the open road.
But the County Surveyors’ traffic safety chair Brian Goodwin said he would be ‘very surprised’ if there was a local authority not fully aware of the relative risk on different routes. ‘While more low cost engineering measures would be effective in many circumstances, driver behaviour is the root cause of most casualties.’
A spokesman for Lancashire County Council said that many of the accidents on the A682 are due to ‘almost unique circumstances that could not be prevented’. Four of the 13 KSIs on the two thirds of the route in its borders had involved motorcyclists.
The KSIs on the urban stretch where a puffin crossing and new signs and markings had been introduced had fallen from four in 2002 to two in 2004. North Yorkshire added that KSIs had halved from four in 2003 to two in 2004 on its section of the A682. Derbyshire urged motorcyclists to take care on the A54 and two other ‘high risk’ roads, while stressing KSIs fell by 13% overall in the county in 2005.
Wakefield and Barnsley councils said in a joint statement that a new 50mph limit, variable message signs and a pedestrian refuge introduced last summer helped to cut the 2.5 KSI average between 1999 and 2004 to one in 2005.

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