Road deaths at their lowest since records began – say Bedford driving instructors

Road deaths fell below 3,000 last year for the first time since records began in 1926.

Pedestrian deaths fell by 5 per cent – but injuries among cyclists and motorcyclist fatalities were on the rise.

Motoring groups said that better car safety technology and greater compliance with the speed limit were the two key factors behind the fall in deaths.

The greatest improvement was in the number of child deaths, which fell by 28 per cent compared with 2006.

The road network is now eight times safer per mile travelled than it was in 1966, when deaths reached a postwar peak of 7,985. There were 2,943 deaths last year, seven per cent fewer than in 2006. The number killed was down for every category of road user except for goods vehicle drivers.

Road deaths had fluctuated between 3,200 and 3,600 since 1994 and last year’s total appears to mark a significant shift towards safer driving.

Last year was the tenth anniversary of the introduction of the EuroNCAP crash-test rating system. The average car in 1997 gained between two and three stars, compared with four or five stars in 2007, owing to the almost universal introduction in new cars of ABS brakes and multiple airbags.

The proportion of cars exceeding the speed limit on residential roads has fallen sharply in the past decade, down from almost three quarters in 1996 to only half in 2006.

The overall improvement masked some poor performances, with deaths rising sharply in Hampshire, Cambridgeshire, Kent, Lincolnshire and Wiltshire. There was little improvement in safety on rural roads. A total of 121 children under 16 died on the roads last year, down from 169 in 2006 and less than half the number killed each year during the mid1990s.

The death rate for car occupants fell twice as fast as for pedestrians and cyclists. There were 1,431 deaths in cars – 11 per cent down on 2006. The number of pedestrians killed fell by 5 per cent to 644 and the number of cyclists by 7 per cent to 146. However, serious injuries among cyclists rose for the third successive year to 2,428. This was partly because of the doubling since 2000 of cycling in London, where there has been a steep rise in low-speed collisions.

There were 588 motorcyclists killed last year, a fall of only 2 per cent on 2006. Motorcycle deaths have been on an upward trend in the last decade from a low of 440 in 1996.

Edmund King, president of the AA, said speed cameras were partly responsible for the reduction in deaths because they had prompted many drivers to pay much closer attention to the limits. Speeding offences reached a peak of 2.1 million in 2005 and fell by 150,000 the following year, the steepest reduction since the introduction of cameras in 1992.

Mr King said: “Drivers are now much more tuned into the fact that speeding can kill and that it isn’t just a bit of fun. The focus on speeding has changed the mentality of drivers and you now see pedestrians waving at cars to slow down.”

He said the crash-test system meant car manufacturers were under intense competitive pressure to produce safer designs. In 1997 the Rover 100 achieved half a star in the first set of crash tests and was withdrawn within six months. The new Renault Clio, a similar-sized car, has five stars. Robert Gifford, director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (Pacts), said that road humps and other engineering measures had made residential roads much safer in the past decade, during which pedestrian deaths fell by more than a third from 1,000 a year.

However, the fall in child deaths was partly the result of greater restrictions on children’s movements outdoors, with parents less likely to allow them to walk or cycle on their own. The drop in the number of cyclists killed was entirely down to a halving in the number of child victims. Adult cyclist deaths increased by 6 per cent from 115 to 122.

Kevin Clinton, the head of road safety at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: “It is worrying to see increases in deaths among adult cyclists and in serious injuries among child cyclists. This shows the need for the new investment of £140 million announced earlier this year to make the roads safer for cyclists and for cyclist training.” Jim Fitzpatrick, the Road Safety Minister, said: “Far too many people are still dying and we will continue to do everything we can to improve road safety and further reduce the numbers of people killed or injured.”

The Government is considering creating a specific target to reduce road deaths below a certain number. Its current target, to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 40 per cent by 2010 compared with the average for 1994-98, has been criticised because interpretations vary on what constitutes a serious injury.

The target is likely to be met (it was down by 36 per cent by 2007), but only because reported serious injuries are falling much faster than deaths.

Pacts has urged the Government to set a target to cut deaths to below 1,000 by 2030 – based on the idea that using the roads should be no more than twice as dangerous as everyday activities such as DIY. At present road travel is 8.5 times as dangerous.

Neil Greig, director of the IAM Motoring Trust, said: “There is no place for complacency in road safety.

“The challenge now is to drive down these figures even further by targeting known high risks such as rural single carriageways, young drivers and those who drive for work.”

Source: The Times Online website, by Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Comments please from driving instructors and driving schools who are BADDIA (Bedford and District Driving Instructors Association) members giving driving lessons, Pass Plus, advanced lessons, automatic lessons, disabled lessons, towing lessons, refresher courses, motorway lessons, fleet training in preparation for driving tests or driver improvement in the Bedford area.