Star comment: Long road to safety, so Think!
You can see things on Shropshire's roads that you would not believe. They are the chancers, the press-on types and the careless.
Usually they get away with it. Either their luck is in, or somebody sees their idiocy and takes measures to accommodate them safely, albeit with perhaps some gesture or flashing of lights to register their irritation.
Roads today are far safer than they used to be. Those which carry the most traffic, such as motorways and dual carriageways, are impressively safe if you factor in the volume of the traffic and the miles covered.
In Shropshire, the story is somewhat different. We do have a motorway, and some dual carriageways, but some of our high volume roads are mostly single carriageway, and are watchwords for danger. The A49 is notorious and claims lives on a depressingly regular basis. The A5 is a mixed bag in which you can see reckless overtaking. And then there are all the smaller roads which have in common the inherently dangerous feature that if you want to pass a vehicle in front, you have to enter the carriageway of oncoming traffic.
Figures from the Department for Transport show that 72 people were killed on country roads in the West Midlands, including Shropshire, and almost 500 were seriously injured. Nationally, You are 11 times more likely to die on a country road than on a motorway.
Apart from overtaking, there are hazards which contribute to the particular danger of rural roads. One is bends. If you are going too fast and come up against an unexpectedly tight bend, you have had it. Then there are the unpredictable things like animals in the road.
The DfT's Think! campaign is urging drivers on rural roads to read the road and anticipate the potential dangers. This is all fairly straightforward, common sense stuff. Unfortunately humans do not always follow sensible advice, so that advice can only be part of the solution.
What is also needed is to make the roads themselves inherently safer, which means investment in better roads, rather than having the pot-holed carriageways that so many Shropshire motorists complain about.
Money is tight and better roads may be some way off. In the meantime, your safety is in your own hands – and also in the hands of those sharing the road with you.
Visit the Think campaign website
