West Mercia road accident figures at all-time low
Tuesday 8th March 2011, 8:31PM GMT.
The number of people killed or seriously injured on roads across West Mercia, including Shropshire, has fallen to an all-time low, figures revealed today.
Last year saw the fewest number of people killed or seriously injured since 1996, when records began.
The figures released by West Mercia Police and the Safer Roads Partnership showed the toll had dropped in both the Shropshire and Telford divisions.
In Shropshire, the number of people killed fell from an average of 27 per year to 20 last year. Serious injuries reduced from 359 per year to 103 last year.
In Telford & Wrekin, the number of fatalities fell from an average of nine per year to two last year, while the number of serious injuries reduced from 136 per year to 35 last year.
The figures for the whole of the West Mercia force area showed 47 people were killed and 330 seriously injured in road crashes last year.
This compares to an average of 97 killed and 1,236 seriously injured per year as a 1994-98 average.
Vicki Bristow, communications manager at the Safer Roads Partnership in West Mercia, said: “It’s encouraging that the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads continues to fall.
“This, in part, is testament to the hard work and investment that continues to be undertaken by the partnership.
“However, any number of deaths or injuries on our roads is unacceptable and more must to be done to continue the good work and ensure our roads are safer for all.”
Superintendent Matt Mead, of West Mercia Police, said: “These figures are encouraging but there is still more work to be done.
“Road safety will continue to be a priority for West Mercia Police.”
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Perhaps now people will understand why, in Telford & Wrekin, the Eastern Primary was transformed into a safe road from a race trap and that we have various 40mph & 50mph speed limits in place on various arterial routes?
Or perhaps people would rather have more deaths and serious injuries so that, on average, they’d arrive at their destination 30 seconds earlier?
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Some of the arterial route changes are fine, but the EP was just a ***ls up. No problem with the 60mph speed limit, but the changes to the layout of the lanes was ridiculous and causes traffic to bunch up whenever there’s a slow vehicle on the road. Traffic joining the flow has to negotiate the nose-to-tail line. I’ve seen vehicles come to a standstill on slip roads because they haven’t been able to join.
Do you remember the sign they put up after they made the changes, which displayed the number of accidents over the previous years? Somebody crashed into it shortly afterwards. Ironic.
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Very few deaths now, Jake. I seem to recall 3-4 fatalities per annum prior to the changes.
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It’s impossible to make a correlation and draw a conclusion, as two variables were changed at the same time:
a) the speed limit
b) the road layout
What’s to say the speed limit change alone wasn’t responsible for the reduction in casualities?
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This could be tested – put the speed limit up to 70mph and see how many deaths there are over the next 5 years?
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Coundn’t agree more H.P. I think its fair to say that Jake will never approve of the changes made to the EP, regardless of the lives they potentially saved.
Maybe now some of the know-it-alls on this site will help themselves to a large slice of humble pie. After years of knocking the highway engineers at the council, prehaps, they do know what they are doing after all!!
I can just see Roadrunner spitting digestive into his cup of tea when he reads this.
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“I think its fair to say that Jake will never approve of the changes made to the EP, regardless of the lives they potentially saved”
So you missed the bit where I said I thought the speed limit reduction was okay?
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