'Most dangerous' roads in Britain

Half of all fatal road crashes occur on one-tenth of Britain's roads, according to charity the Road Safety Foundation.

Its report, covering 28,000 miles of A-roads and motorways, says Scotland has the highest-risk highways, followed by parts of northern England. It identified the A537 between Macclesfield, Cheshire, and Buxton, Derbyshire, as the most dangerous road.

The charity wants government spending to be targeted at improving safety on the most dangerous roads. Its report, entitled Saving Lives for Less, suggests the high cost of emergency services and hospitals could be avoided by spending small sums in accident blackspots. The foundation is the British arm of the European Road Assessment Programme, the sister organisation of EuroNCAP, which measures car safety.

It examined accident data relating to roads across Britain. Among its conclusions were:

• A third of all fatal and serious crashes happen at junctions
• Single roads carry six times the risk of motorways and twice that of dual carriageways
• One-in-four fatal or serious crashes on A-roads or motorways involves a motorcyclist
• There was a 5% reduction in the number of fatal crashes on such roads in the past three years
• West Midlands is the safest region

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source: BBC