UK Road Accident Record Placed in the Spotlight

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has called for the government to commit to publishing a new road safety strategy for England, in the light of recent statistics that point to ‘a dramatic lack of UK road safety progress over the last decade’.

The RoSPA has highlighted figures from the World Health Organisation’s Global Status Report on Road Safety for 2023, along with its own analysis of recent road safety statistics, which indicate that numbers of road fatalities and injuries have plateaued in the UK since 2010. While road safety in the UK has stalled, there has been a 36 per cent reduction in road deaths across the European region as a whole, according to the RoSPA.

David Walker, Head of Road and Leisure Safety at the RoSPA, said, “We are seeing around 81 people killed or seriously injured on our roads every day, which is unacceptable and evidently linked to the dramatic lack of UK road safety progress over the last decade.

“We cannot and must not wait to act and urge the government to publish its long-overdue Road Safety Strategic Framework for England, and to set out casualty reduction targets that are in line with other G7 nations. Only then can we begin to address our woeful position on the road safety leaderboard.”