Rural road accidents are a major issue in relation to casualty reduction on Scotland’s roads. According to police recorded road accident data for Scotland, the number of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents in 2005 reduced by 39 percentage points compared with the average between 1 994 and 1 998 (Scottish Executive, 2005). However, the fall in all casualties was greater for built-up roads and the number of fatalities declined at a much slower rate on non-built-up (rural) roads. Presently there are fewer casualties on rural roads (42% of total casualties in 2005), but a higher proportion of people that are killed (72% of total fatalities in 2005) and the majority of people seriously injured (53%) are involved in accidents on roads in non-built-up areas. Specific action needs to be taken to reduce the number of casualties on rural roads. Car-users account for over 70% of all those killed or seriously injured on non-built-up roads and most car occupant fatalities occur on non-built-up roads. Additionally, non-built-up A-roads and B-roads have the highest accident rate per vehicle kilometre in Scotland and most rural accidents on single carriageways occur on A-roads in 60 mph speed limits away from junctions. Single vehicle accidents account for one third of all rural single carriageway accidents (Scottish Executive, 2005; Hamilton & Kennedy, 2005; Hopkin & Morris, 2007). Against this background, the Scottish Government and Road Safety Scotland (RSS) commissioned research from TNS System Three, the Transport Research Institute (TRi) and the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) to learn more about rural road accidents, driving behaviour on such roads and attitudes to driving on rural roads (Collins, Eynon, MacLeod, Stradling, Crinson, Scoons, Broughton, in press). This multi-stage, sequential project included an analysis of STATS 1 9 data (a national system used by police reporting officers for recording contributory factors for road accidents), a survey of rural car drivers and focus groups with young, male rural car drivers. For the purposes of this research a rural road was defined as: “A road that is outside of towns and has a speed limit of 50 miles an hour or more, but is not a motorway or dual carriageway”. Initial analysis of the STATS 1 9 data showed that speed was an important factor in rural road accidents, particularly when associated with loss of control. Loss of control was the factor recorded most often, in 32% of serious, and 45% of fatal rural road accidents. There were two speed-related factors in the STATS 1 9 list: travelling too fast for the conditions and exceeding the speed limit. When accidents where both speed codes were recorded are combined, excessive speed, though not necessarily above the speed limit, was a factor in 22% of serious and 33% of fatal accidents. Both loss of control and travelling too fast for the conditions were recorded more often in accidents on rural than urban roads. Additionally, travelling too fast for the conditions was the factor most often listed in combination with loss of control, in 26% of serious accidents and 29% of fatal accidents. This confirms that loss of control is strongly associated with excessive speed, which may or may not be above the speed limit. The car driver survey thus included, inter alia, questions about exceeding the speed limit, speed selection and speed adjustment on rural roads in greater detail. This is the focus of the current paper. (Author/publisher)
Abstract