There are fewer road deaths per head of the population in Britain than in almost any other country in the world. With minor variations in international rankings, this has been the case consistently for many years. The most recent data (2015) show that Norway and Sweden both have fewer road deaths per head than Britain while Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands have more. The work reported here has attempted to disaggregate this important but high-level statistic and to explore the relative safety of Britain’s roads, road users and vehicles in order to see if there are areas where renewed focus might deliver significant safety benefits. In areas where Britain’s road safety record is even better than those of other countries, it may be possible to improve Britain’s roads further still through measures which have been found to be effective elsewhere, though these areas were not the focus of the study reported here. Britain’s relative position is broadly consistent when the road fatality rate is expressed in terms of road deaths per head as above, road deaths per person-kilometre, or road deaths as a proportion of all deaths. Britain’s relative performance may partly be due to higher levels of compliance, for example with mobile phone and drink-drive legislation. The comparisons used to assess the relative safety of different countries’ roads described above necessarily involve using figures which are averaged across each country as a whole. These can disguise the variation within each country and differences in different aspects of the road safety system. Nonetheless, some indicative differences between Britain and other countries with similar numbers of road deaths per head emerge in relation to the safety of each of the three aspects of roads, road users and vehicles. Roads: Differences in road type classifications in different countries make comparisons on this basis more challenging than many other comparisons. Nonetheless, some differences emerge. For example, comparisons with other countries with similar numbers of road deaths per head indicate that: *A greater proportion of British road deaths are on roads with speed limits of 60 mph or more (90 km/h or more). (Proportionally fewer British road deaths are on roads with speed limits of 50 mph (80 km/h) or less.) ??Britain has more deaths per unit length of motorway, though not necessarily per vehicle-kilometre, than the average motorway in the EU. ??Deaths on roads in urban areas are more likely to be male in Britain, and in rural areas more likely to be female, than in other countries. ??Road deaths are more likely to be recorded as occurring at junctions in Britain. ??In rural areas in Britain, pedestrians constitute a larger proportion of road deaths, and car/taxi occupants a smaller proportion. Road users: Although there appear to be fewer vehicle occupant deaths per head in Britain than in other countries which have similar numbers of road deaths per head in total, there appear to be more vulnerable road user deaths per head in Britain than in these other countries: pedestrians, pedal cyclists and motorcyclists constitute almost half of Britain’s road deaths, but fewer than two-fifths in Sweden. This does not appear to be because there are proportionally more vulnerable road users in Britain than in other countries; there are limited amounts of comparable data on this but the indications are that, if anything, there are proportionally fewer vulnerable road users in Britain than in other countries. The likelihood of a pedal cyclist being killed per distance travelled in the UK is approximately twice that in the Netherlands, Denmark or Norway. When pedestrians are killed in Britain, the collision is more likely to involve a car or taxi than is the case in other countries which have similar numbers of road deaths per head, despite marginally lower car ownership levels in Britain. Pedestrian and pedal cyclist fatalities are more likely to be male in the UK than in other countries; again, this may reflect differences in the amount of cycling and walking; for example, differences in the amount of walking and cycling undertaken by women and by men may be greater in the UK than in other countries. While motorcyclists account for just 1% of UK traffic, almost one in five UK road deaths are motorcyclists; the motorcyclist fatality rate per person-kilometre in the UK is 35% higher than that in the Netherlands. 18-24 year olds are at more risk of being killed on the road in most countries than the average person. However, this difference in risk per head is proportionally larger on British roads than on the roads of most other EU countries, including those in the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Vehicles: The proportion of new cars which have a 5-star European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) rating is smaller in the UK than in Sweden, and the proportion of new cars which have a 2-star Euro NCAP rating is larger in the UK than in the Netherlands. In addition, the average pedestrian protection score on new cars is lower in the UK than across the EU as a whole, and lower than in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands, though higher than in Denmark. These points suggest that the number of road deaths per head in the UK could be reduced further if Britain’s new vehicles were as safe as those of other countries with similar numbers of road deaths per head; however, all of these differences are small. The number of killed or seriously injured car occupants has been falling in Britain; some of this trend can be attributed to secondary safety design improvements in the last two decades, encouraged by Euro NCAP and mandated by EU type-approval. However, these benefits appear not to have been shared by pedestrians and other vulnerable road users: the proportion of injured pedestrians who are killed or seriously injured in impacts with the front of cars has not experienced the same reduction as is the case for car occupants. Nonetheless, the design changes made to the front of cars to protect pedestrians may be having positive effects; for example, there may have been a reduction in the absolute severity of injuries to vulnerable road users, but within the ‘serious’ category in police STATS19 collision records. Further evaluation is needed to understand the injury types amongst vulnerable road users to ensure future collision and injury mitigation strategies are effective. Background factors: Based on the findings within this study, Britain’s relatively low fatality rate could be partly explained by various background factors including differences in national demographics and travel patterns. For example, Britain may have less travel by pedestrians and cyclists than some other comparator countries, though it was not possible to obtain comparable data on these metrics. Britain’s population density is lower than that of the Netherlands but higher than those of Switzerland and Denmark, and substantially higher than those of Sweden and Norway. Britain’s population is slightly younger, and a higher proportion of its population is female, than those of Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. For example, a larger proportion of Britain’s population is under 25 than is the case in all three of these countries. The effect of these differences on road safety outcomes is currently unclear, and more work is required to identify, quantify and analyse these differences if Britain’s road safety record is to be understood and improved still further. Reliability of comparisons: Although countries within the EU use a common definition for road deaths, there are many differences in the way in which other measures related to road safety are measured. These differences include not only the classifications of non-fatal road injuries, but also the ways in which exposure data are collected and classified. Comparable data for various measures for Norway and Switzerland are harder to obtain than those of other countries on account of these two countries not being EU member states. Subsequently, it is very challenging to compare the road safety records of different countries meaningfully and to understand the reasons for differences and similarities reliably. For example, the number of road casualties is sensitive to the distances travelled by pedestrians and pedal cyclists yet the standard way in which these distances are measured appears to vary by country; this means that apparent differences in vulnerable road user casualty rates may not reflect genuine differences in safety. More harmonised approaches to data collection and classification in different countries would therefore be beneficial in identifying the effectiveness of different approaches and, ultimately, to improving road safety in all countries including Britain. Recommendations: Britain’s road safety outcomes do not always appear to be as good as those of some other countries and therefore there is potential to learn from their experience to reduce road casualties further. Recommendations for the UK include: * Reviewing the safety of roads with speed limits of 60 mph and above, including motorways. * Further investment in motorway safety. * Ensuring that junctions are designed as safely as possible, particularly in respect of vulnerable road users. * Implementing measures to improve the safety of pedestrians, pedal cyclists and motorcyclists. * Implementing further measures to improve the safety of young drivers. * Modernising the car fleet in the UK, replacing the oldest cars with today’s highest Euro NCAP performing cars. * Implementing higher standards of protection for vulnerable road users in vehicle safety regulation and Euro NCAP. * Obtaining and classifying casualty and exposure data in more consistent ways in different countries to enable more robust international comparison and evaluation. To help address these issues, questions which need further investigation include: - hy are there proportionally more road deaths on roads with higher speed limits in Britain than in other countries? -Why do Britain’s motorways have more deaths per unit length than motorways in other countries? (If this is simply because traffic volumes are higher, is more effort to improve motorway safety warranted in Britain than is the case in other countries?) -How do travel patterns vary in different countries by area type? For example: -In Britain, do males travel more in urban areas and females travel more in rural areas, proportionally speaking, than in other countries? -In rural areas in Britain, are pedestrians and motorcyclists proportionally more common, and cars/taxis proportionally less common, than in other countries? -How are junctions classified differently in different countries, in terms of where road deaths occur, and what impact do these differences have on the relative proportions of road deaths at junctions? -Why are there proportionally more vulnerable road user deaths in Britain than in other countries? -Why are there proportionally more fatalities among 18-24 year olds in Britain than in other countries? -How many collisions could be prevented and how many casualties mitigated, particularly among vulnerable road users, if cars on Britain's roads have higher Euro NCAP star rating. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting