Brake and RoSPA call for road safety targets
26 February 2024
The UK government has been urged to set new road deaths reduction targets as the number of annual road deaths increased 10 per cent year-on-year between 2021 and 2022.
Statistics from the Department for Transport (DfT) show that 1,711 people died on UK roads in 2022, 303 of whom died because the other driver was speeding. This figure is an increase of 20 per cent compared with 2021 data.
The number of other ‘serious injuries’ sustained on UK roads also increased year-on-year in 2022 by 8 per cent to 28,031.
Ross Moorlock, interim CEO of road safety charity Brake - which recently hosted its annual Road Safety Week themed around ‘speed’ - appeared as a guest speaker on Fleet News at 10. While he praised road safety measures currently being implemented by the DfT, he also said, “There are now other things that we need to see from the Government.
“We need a strategic framework for road safety, which has been outstanding now for a long time, and is well overdue. We need to see national targets being set so that we can hold people to account, and we know what we are actually striving to achieve and to deliver.”
He added, “Every day five people die on UK roads and many more suffer serious life-changing injuries and speed is one of the biggest killers. We know that it's a contributory factor in one in four fatal crashes.
“We know that when we travel at safe speeds, we reduce the risk of road deaths and injuries, and we enable more people to make safe and healthy journeys on foot and by bike.”
Further analysis of the DfT data shows that driving for work, as opposed to driving to work, is one of the most dangerous undertakings of employees, with around a third of road deaths and a fifth of serious injuries involving someone driving for work, for example delivery drivers.
In 2022, road deaths resulting from collisions involving light goods vehicles (LGVs), heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), buses and coaches all increased:
- 214 people were killed in crashes involving LGVs (an increase of 10 per cent)
- 220 people were killed in crashes involving HGVs (an increase of 6 per cent)
- 45 people were killed in crashes involving buses or coaches (an increase of 32 per cent)
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) is also calling for the publication of the ‘long-overdue’ Road Safety Strategic Framework and for casualty reduction targets to be set in line with other G7 countries. This comes after RoSPA’s analysis of the World Health Organisation's Global Status Report on Road Safety which found that the UK has made significantly less progress in improving road safety over the recent decade compared with the previous decade. The UK achieved just a 5 per cent reduction in road deaths, compared with a 46 per cent reduction in the decade to 2010.
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