1. Understanding the UK’s road safety performance
July 2016

2. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Introduction
Roads
Road users
Vehicles
Recommendations

3. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Road fatalities in EU28
2020 EU road casualty target approx. 15,000 deaths

4. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Road fatalities in EU28
The downward casualty trend is mainly associated with cars
Progress for VRUs (pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists) is not as good

5. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Road deaths per million inhabitants
Source: DfT
Source: EC

6. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Road deaths per billion vehicle-kilometres
Source: EC

7. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Introduction
Roads
Road users
Vehicles
Recommendations

8. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Road deaths by speed limit
Speed limits (km/h)
Netherlands
Sweden UK
Speed limits (mph)
30, 40, 50
44%
18%
31%
20, 30
60, 70, 80
43%
49%
17%
40, 50
90, 100 6%
26%
39% 60
110, 120 5% 7%
13% 70
>120 3% 0%
>70
Source: CARE 2013

9. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Road deaths by road type
Source: EC

10. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Percentage of collisions at junctions
Urban
Rural
Source: EC

11. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Fatalities per 1,000 km of motorway
Source: EC

12. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Introduction
Roads
Road users
Vehicles
Recommendations

13. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Number of fatalities in 2013 by road user type
Car or taxi
Heavy goods vehicle
Lorry <3.5 tonnes
Moped
Motorcycle
Pedal cycle
Pedestrian
Other
Total DK 79 1 17 11 15 33 34
190 NL
180 7 41 29
112 51
435 SE
144 5 3 40 14 42 2
255 UK
815 22 39 4
337
113
405
1752
Car or taxi
Heavy goods vehicle
Lorry <3.5 tonnes
Moped
Motorcycle
Pedal cycle
Pedestrian
Other
Total DK
14.1
0.2
3.0
2.0
2.7
5.9
6.1
0.0
33.9 NL
10.7
0.4
0.9
2.4
1.7
6.7
25.9 SE
15.1
0.5
0.3
4.2
1.5
4.4
26.7 UK
12.7
0.6
0.1
5.3
1.8
6.3
27.3
Source: EC

14. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
GB KSI road casualties
This chart shows a fairly simple comparison of casualty numbers by road user type over time.
The values in this chart are indexed to the 2004 figure in order to compare how the casualty numbers changed over the period studied.
Comparison of the trend in the number of car occupant casualites to the trend in pedestrians hit by cars shows that car occupants have declined more than pedestrians over the 10 year period 2004 to 2014.
The trend for car occupants of new vehicles (<2 years old) and pedestrians hit by these vehicles shows an even bigger difference in trend between the two groups – car occupants in new cars have declined more than the number of pedestrians hit by these vehicles.
Although there is likely to be a variety of measures which have contributed to these differences in trend, improvments to car safety are likely to have contributed.
There are two types of vehicle safety
Secondary safety – the protection provided to occupants in accidents e.g airbags, seatbeltsand crumple zones
Primary safety - features that help drivers avoid accidents e.g. electronic stability control, lane assist
The effect of primary safety is hard to measure as it involves predicting the number of accidents that haven’t happened, but we can develop statistical models to examine how secondary safety developments have influenced both car occupants and pedestrians.
Develop logistic regression models with three explanatory variables:
car registration year (newer cars are assumed to have improved secondary safety than older vehicles)
year of accident (other changes in road safety will have influenced collision numbers)
driver age and sex (takes into account the fact that older people are more often seriously injured than younger people, and driver different cars)
Vehicle type (bigger cars protect their occupants better than smaller vehicles, but cause more injury to pedestrian casualties).
Model the proportion of car driver casualties and pedestrian casualties killed or seriously injured by car registration year.
Results on the next two slides show results of the model for KSI casualites in London (work for TfL completed last year).
Previous analysis for Surrey County Council using data from the whole of GB showed a similar pattern.
Source: TRL

15. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Ratio of number of fatalities among year olds
Source: TRL

16. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Pedal cyclists – safety in numbers?
Source: EC

17. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Pedestrian deaths by age group
Source: EC

18. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Population distributions UK
13.5% >65
Sweden
16.0% >65
The Netherlands
13.6% >65
Source: IRTAD

19. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Introduction
Roads
Road users
Vehicles
Recommendations

20. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Proportion of cars by age
Source: EC

21. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Euro NCAP tested cars ( ) sold in 2013
Source: EC

22. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Average pedestrian protection scores of cars sold in 2013
Source: EC

23. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Car secondary safety – KSI drivers, GB
Your text
The graph shows the modelled proportion of car driver casualties killed or seriously injured by registration year of the vehicle. [Reference levels: males 25-59, small family car, 2013]
The downwards trend shows that improvements to car secondary safety have reduced the proportion of car driver casualties killed or seriously injured in collisions in London.
Source: TRL

24. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Car driver casualty reduction:
Largest reduction for younger males
Changes in exposure
Less driving by younger people?
Improved vehicle safety
Cuerden et al. (2015) estimated that secondary safety alone, from 2002, has prevented 11% of driver fatalities.
Improved driver behaviour
Education/ training/ Enforcement/ Licensing?
Improved road design
+++
Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Car secondary safety – KSI drivers, GB
Age (years) 24

25. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Car secondary safety – pedestrians, GB
Your text
The pedestrian model shows the proportion of pedestrian casualties killed or seriously injured in collisions where the pedestrian was hit by the front of a car. [Reference level: males 16-59, small family car, 2013]
This suggests that the secondary safety changes to the front of cars have had little benefit for pedestrian casualties hit by the front of a vehicle.
Although the trend in this line is slightly upwards, the main effect of registration year is not significant for this model, which indicates that the gradient of the line is not significantly different from zero.
Hence, this suggests that although this modelling has not demonstrated any benefit of the secondary safety changes targeted at pedestrians in frontal collisions, it has not demonstrated any significant disbenefit either.
Similarly flat trends are seen for pedal cycles and PTW riders.
[There may be other changes which the model cannot observe or control for which may have occurred:
It could be that cars with a newer registration year have a different exposure to potentially fatal or serious injury collisions with a pedestrian, in a way that is not included within the statistical model (e.g. if they were driven more aggressively around peak pedestrian movement times).
It is plausible that improved bumper profiles and stiffness and softer bonnets do indeed improve the outcome for struck pedestrians, but that they are still categorised as being a casualty of at least serious injury severity because this covers a broad range of injuries.]
Source: TRL

26. Understanding the UK’s Road Safety Performance
Recommendations
This work has highlighted various areas in which Britain’s road safety outcomes, though good, do not appear to be as good as those of some other countries. They point to the following broad recommendations:
Higher standards of protection for vulnerable road users in vehicle safety regulation and Euro NCAP;
Measures to improve the safety of young drivers and their passengers;
Further investment in motorway safety (despite good current performance);
A review of the safety of roads with speed limits of 60mph and above, including motorways;
Better data to enable international comparison and evaluation.

27. Report by Brian Lawton and Caroline Fordham Presented by Richard Cuerden, Chief Scientist July 2016