Further memorandum from the Road Safety
Foundation (RS 75A)
QUERY 1
Total cost of crashes (including an allowance
for damage-only crashes) in Great Britain is £18.3 billion
(using the Willingness To Pay method), these costs forming 1.5%
of GDP (all at a 2007 base).
This estimate is based on the latest crash data
available (2006) with crash cost data from 2005 uplifted to 2007.
Highways Economic Note No 1, Department for Transport: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/ea/pdfeconnote105.pdf
The GDP data are those for 2006 at 2007 value.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/Blue_Book_2007_web.pdf—page
33.
This is costs in Great Britain, not UK. A 3%
reduction in the GDP has been assumed in excluding Northern Ireland.
QUERY 2
Britain's performance falling behind that of
other countries (per head of population)—SafetyNet Table
2 http://www.erso.eu/data/content/main_figures.htm£_Main_figures
Rate of change of death reduction cited in Commission
of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission,
European Road Safety Action Programme Mid-Term Review:
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road/library/rsap_midterm/rsap_mtr_communication_en.pdf
Fatal road crash reduction performance of EU
countries. Number of people killed between 2001 and 2004:
9 member states (Germany, Estonia, France, Italy,
Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden) have reduced
at a faster rate than the average for the 25 (-14%).
8 member states (Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Spain,
Ireland, Austria, Finland, United Kingdom) showed limited progress
(a fall of at least 5%, but less than the average rate).
In 6 others (Czech Republic, Latvia, Hungary,
Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia) progress has been very slow or there
has been a slight backward trend (a maximum rate of progress of
5%).
Fatalities in Cyprus and Lithuania have increased.
QUERY 3
It is widely recognised in many countries active
in crash reduction that, as high-risk sites are improved, injury-producing
crashes will no longer cluster at single sites. The effect of
countermeasure work will mean that those crashes that remain will
be scattered across the network. In order to treat the crashes
that remain it will be necessary to use an approach that will
raise the standard of the network as a whole (by route or mass
action). See, for example, Lynam D and S D Lawson (2005), "Potential
for risk reductions on British inter-urban major roads" Traffic
Engineering & Control, 46, No. 10, pp 358-361.
June 2008
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