Fewer road casualties - isn’t that good news?
by Simon Handby in Your car on 01.10.07
Sadly, road accidents are an unavoidable part of motoring in the UK, but detailed statistics published last week by the Department for Transport (DfT) show that our roads are getting safer.
The number of people killed on the UK’s roads fell by 1% in 2006 to 3,172, compared to 3,201 in 2005. Serious injuries also fell by 1%, despite a 1% increase in the amount of traffic that’s about.
More significantly, at 258,404 there was a 5% reduction in the total number of people injured in or by road vehicles, and the number of children killed or seriously injured fell by 9% year-on-year.
Unfortunately, the figures also show a 1% rise in the number of pedestrians killed, and a disturbing 5% rise motorcyclist fatalities.
DfT spokesperson Victoria Buxton told us:
We of course are pleased to see road casualties continuing to be [reduced], ensuring that we remain on track to meet our 2010 target of reducing all killed or serious injury accidents by 40%. Of course, we will not be complacent and continue to focus on reducing road casualties even further.
Interestingly, the less detailed ‘headline figures’ that we’ve listed above were published at the end of June, not long after the press gave wide coverage to the Vatican’s 10 car-mandments.
We don’t remember seeing the (mostly) good news mentioned in any of the sources that we regularly trawl, and even now a Google UK search for “road casualties 2006″ doesn’t turn up coverage of these figures in the national press.
Though there’s little cause for complacency, we think they’re pretty newsworthy.
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