ROAD SAFETY CHARITY: £47.5 MILLION INVESTMENT SET TO SAVE LIVES ON 27 LOCAL ROADS IN ENGLAND

The government has today announced a £47.5 million investment on 27 roads to prevent deaths and serious injuries on England’s local road network.

This new investment as part of the Department for Transport’s Safer Roads Fund will see life-saving road safety engineering measures introduced on local authority A roads.

Following on from the success of previous phases of the Safer Roads Fund, this investment will secure safer roads for walking, cycling, riding and driving across England.

Early estimates suggest that the £47.5 million investment should prevent around 760 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years, with a benefit to society of £420 million. Once the whole life costs are factored in for the schemes, the overall Benefit Cost Ratio of the investment is estimated as 7.4, meaning for every £1 invested the societal benefit would be £7.40.

The previous Safer Roads Fund investment in 2018 of £100m focused primarily on rural roads and won a prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award as an “outstanding achievement” and a “fine example of collaboration”. This new funding is split more evenly across rural and urban roads where funding can support greater levels of safer active travel.

The Road Safety Foundation welcomed the news saying that it provides an opportunity to accelerate efforts to prevent death and serious injury on our roads.

Dr Suzy Charman, Executive Director said: “The commitment and funding announced today is transformational for road safety teams in local authorities across the country. It will allow them to proactively reduce risk and make these 27 roads safer and more inviting for all road users.

“Systematic changes have already had a big impact on road death and serious injury, for example seatbelts and airbags protect lives when crashes happen. In the same way we can design roads so that when crashes happen people can walk away, by clearing or protecting roadsides, putting in cross hatching to add space between vehicles, providing safer junctions like roundabouts or adding signalisation and/or turning pockets, and including facilities for walking and cycling.”

Dr Suzy Charman added: “We congratulate the Secretary of State Mark Harper, the Roads Minister Richard Holden and the team at the Department for Transport for their commitment to bring life-saving measures to these roads.