Annual road deaths down slightly for 2018 according to DfT
Road deaths are down slightly in 2018 according to provisional figures from the Department for Transport (DfT). A total of 1,782 people died on Britain’s roads in 2018, a number that is 1% less than the 1,793 fatality figure for the previous year.
The number of road users killed annually has barely changed since 2010, though over the same period road traffic volume has risen by 8%. An additional 25,484 people were seriously hurt. The DfT says: “The evidence points towards Britain being in a period when the fatality numbers are stable and most of the changes relate to random variation.” Of the fatalities:
777 victims were car occupants (44% of the total)
454 were pedestrians (25%)
354 were motorcyclists (20%)
99 were cyclists (6%)
98 were ‘other’ (5%)
The casualty rates were:
motorcyclists 120 fatalities per billion passenger miles travelled
pedestrians 34 fatalities
cyclists 30 fatalities
car occupants 1.8 fatalities
bus 0.3 fatalities
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “We are looking at a picture that has barely changed in a decade; one where cars are getting safer for their occupants but all too often vulnerable road users are bearing the brunt of collisions. “We are pleased to be leading the government-funded road collision investigation project, working with three police forces to see whether systemic failures – to do with road design perhaps or wider social and employment policies – might lie behind some of the more obvious causes of crashes currently recorded by officers at the scene.”
Image: Pixabay (CC0)
