Government must take necessary action to make UK roads safer - Report
Matthew Jupp, Public Affairs Manager
| Ageas UK
Ageas UK comments on annual results published today at a transport conference, celebrating Britain’s most improved roads and identifying persistent high risk roads.
In 2015, 1,732 people were killed on Britain’s roads. Sadly every day sees road crashes causing more death and serious injuries.
Ageas is the UK’s third largest car insurer (by number of cars insured) and we see the devastating effect that these crashes have on the lives of those involved, and their families, friends and colleagues. We take our responsibility to our customers seriously, so it would not be right to sit back and see this happening without taking positive action to improve the safety of the roads our customers use.
For the past five years we’ve sponsored the Road Safety Foundation’s annual EuroRAP reports, which would not be available without our funding. The research assesses the 10% of British roads where over half of all roads death are concentrated (a network of motorways and ‘A’ roads outside of urban centres). They analyse some 44,400 km of roads with a high concentration of risk, social and economic loss, providing a invaluable resource for the local authorities and government agencies which look after our roads.
Using the data collated in these reports, it’s possible to work out what action can be taken to reduce crashes and, as importantly, where valuable resources should be concentrated. It enables roads authorities to make strong business cases for improvements – an important consideration when some places like Hampshire, Kent and Essex saw crashes cost over half-a-billion pounds between 2012-14.
This year’s EuroRAP report – ‘Making Road Travel as Safe as Rail and Air’ - makes clear that ensuring travel on our road system is as safe as on rail and in the air is a goal achievable within a generation. We need the same systematic approach to road safety as we take elsewhere in the workplace and on our transport system. It is sobering to think that when it comes to our highways there is greater discipline protecting road workers mending the road from risks than the general public driving on them. That must change.
At Ageas we support a number of road safety initiatives – looking to make children safer on their way to school, supporting an older driver task force to respond to their particular challenges, encouraging younger drivers to get ‘black box’ technology fitted in their cars to improve their driving performance, and many other schemes.
Overall, our position is quite simple: we believe that action must be taken to reduce the number of crashes on our roads that result in serious injuries and deaths. We would urge the government, local authorities and MPs to take a good look at the report we’ve sponsored and drive the necessary action to make our roads safer.
If you’d like to know more about our work, please contact me here.
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