Organisation: National Highways
Date of Publication: July 2022
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre: 31 August 2022
This report shows a bigger year-on-year reduction in the number of fatalities on England’s motorways and A roads during 2020, than on the whole of the country’s road network.
2020 was a year heavily impacted by Covid-19, and previously published figures from the DfT show a 17% fall in the total number of road deaths in Great Britain when compared to 2019. This is due to less traffic on the roads – down by 21% – as a result of travel restrictions.
The data published by National Highways in this report shows 138 deaths on the strategic road network (SRN) in England during 2020 – a year-on-year fall of 34%. There were similar reductions in KSIs (down 32%) and in all casualties (down 36%). This compares to a 25% fall in traffic levels.
The SRN in England, managed by National Highways, comprises 4,300 miles of motorways and A roads.
Looking at road user type, 80 of the recorded fatalities on the SRN in 2020 were car occupants, 11 HGV occupants and 7 LGV occupants.
Among those typically classed as vulnerable, 23 pedestrians were killed – this figure includes those who were travelling in a vehicle on the network but were outside their vehicle at the time of the collision, for example, on the hard shoulder. There were 16 motorcyclist fatalities and one cyclist.
In terms of casualty rates, motorcyclists were ranked as the most vulnerable, with 77.86 KSI casualties per hundred million vehicle miles travelled. However, this is still considerably lower than the reported national average for motorcyclists (including passengers) on all roads in Great Britain, which is approximately 179.5 KSIs per hundred million vehicle mile
The report concludes that the rate of reduction in casualties across all road types has slowed in recent years (2020 being the exception, due to the covid travel restrictions). This slowing of progress is not just on the SRN but across other non-SRN roads in the country and across Europe.
The report shows there are opportunities for improvement across all road types, user groups and age groups. The greater opportunities for reducing the number of casualties on the SRN, however, will come from A-roads (58% of all KSIs) and also focussing on key groups such as car users, motorcyclists and older drivers.
Access the report via the gov.uk website: