Stunning data visualization highlights the casualty toll on Britain's roads over the past decade

@Gkam84 re: list of fatalities

not surprised by some of the stats there. Spain, where I've lived, about twice that of UK, known a few Spanish people involved in serious crashes; South Korea - 4 times - complete lunatics on the roads and the mopeds regularly behave like the worst cyclists here.

But some surprises as well, the Netherlands, often held up as an example here, slightly worse; Belgium and Denmark, around 3 times as many deaths and both worse than Italy.

Of course the stats aren't broken down into cyclists, peds and vehicles but given that the majority of people, even on this cycling site, will do all three on a regular basis we're not doing so badly, even though any fatality is deeply regrettable.

totally meaningless data as there is nothing with which to normalise it ie: average vehicle per km traffic flow rates per year by vehicle type. You need this crucial data to decide if a particular road is in fact dangerouis for the vehicle you choose to drive/ride.

to use an extreme, if a road has only 10 users per km per year and 2 of them are killed in that year its pretty dangerous. If 2 million users per km are on that road per year and only 2 were killed I say it was pretty safe.

there is no data here to make that comparison so you may as well just bin it.

According to this map,, there are NO fatalities or injuries in Northern Ireland. Well, that's very reassuring, but based on the number of near misses I experience in NI on an almost daily basis, somehow I don't believe it. It does make you wonder about the reliability of this presentation.

Didn't http://www.crashmap.co.uk/ get there first?

Is it every? Can't be surely, I must have misread..?

I can't find my collision from '08, or the death in the same year, month earlier, of a local cyclist killed by a drug driver.

I must admit, when I zoomed in on my daily commute route and local area I was pleasantly surprised at how sparse the incidents were - the sad bit being when I zoomed in on the one death on my way to work and found it was an 8 year-old - that killed the mood

Zoomed in on our local area then wished I had't...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_...

I think this says it ALL road deaths per 100,000 people

Marshall Islands
Sweden
San Marino
Malta

The only 4 countries below the UK

Alarming though the figures are, bear in mind that Italy has roughly the same population as the UK and around twice the fatalities on its roads. Thailand also has a population of around 60 million and has 10 times the fatalities.

As much as i hate the idea of ghost bikes, i think ghost cars would just be taking it a little OTT

Plus ghost bikes are going to become a problem soon if every cyclist that dies has one erected in their memory, up here and i know other places around the country, the local council and police are removing roadside memorials for "safety" reasons and if not instantly removed are being taken away after three months

If ghost bikes keep appearing, rather than the government looking at cyclist's safety they will just ban ghost bikes and memorials on "safety" grounds

I don't really care about the breakdown statistics, but if these numbers of deaths or SI happened in a single day then they would eclipse those on Sept. 11.

I saw a huge political response to that event, why do I hear nothing to this?

I'm sorry this is getting ridiculous, you are all just regurgitating various stats and analysing them differently while saying we shouldn't die. Well I'm sorry to be the party pooper here but if there is one constant in the universe it is death. The only and I mean ONLY way to prevent deaths on the road is to not go out. So lets stop firing stats at each other and be realistic, yes it is hard when we loose someone close due to a road accident but there are too many individual factors involved to even begin to protect everyone, the primary one being us humans and our wonderful ability to be stupid. Reducing the speed limit does not reduce the speed of a car. I'm glad they have included all accidents on here as I can just imagine the disgust and ravings if it was only cyclists, you just have to compare cyclists to the poor pedestrian.

I suspect one of the reasons enquiries are held after train crashes is because of a train's passanger capacity, and therefore because of the potential number of people that were/are/could have been at risk of injury or death. There's nothing on the road that transports the same number of people as a train. Coaches are the nearest, with a capacity of around 55-60. A coach crash with fatalities is usually reported on the national news; individual incidents of car crashes rarely are - unless the number of deaths is more than one or two. Five separate car crashes, all in different locations, which result in, say, one death at each incident is extremely unlikey to make it onto the national news. A crash involving a coach load of people that results in five deaths almost certainly will make the national news.
It's the same following plane crashes. The potential for high numbers of fatalaties in a plane crash is far greater than in a multi-vehicle pile up.

Don't get me wrong, i do like that road deaths are being highlighted like this, it may make some people think about their own driving, but until its broken down a bit further it just a way to show some people in pictures what is already available in writing, so its almost "a idiots guide to"

I quite agree something needs to be done about enforcing existing laws around various things including mobile phones and speed limits, BUT again, this is all down to money, look how the police force is being cut left, right and centre, reducing its ability to deal with these issues

As for 20mph zones in urban areas, while in theory this would become a great ideal, its just impossible to enforce in reality.

I'll show you an example local to me just because i know about it, This picture is Aboyne, the next big village down the road to me, all the roads i have marked orange are between 20 and 30 mph, the main road running right through the village "Ballater Road" has a 20mph at certain times of the day, I can't find the document because it seems to have been removed for the local council site, but it shows that more accidents happened in the 20mph time rather than the 30mph

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/5541/aboyne.jpg

In the UK in 2009, there were 156,090 deaths from cancer. So over 10 years just as an average using 2009 as an example 1,560,900 would have died from cancer thats 4272 every day over 10 years so on that basis, i have a 475% higher chance of being diagnosed and dying from cancer than getting killed on the UK roads

I think thats a much better example of how dangerous the roads are in comparision to something that has a high mortality rate, not rail deaths which we all know in this country, the rail system, although late, old and prone to break downs in pretty much the safest way to travel

Brilliant representation of something quite horrific.

Love the fact you can embed it in your own site/blog.

Never thought there was much point to reporting various incedents and minor injuries I've received till now!

"almost 3 million people have been injured, equivalent to one in five of the population"

That would make the population 15 Million - UK population is about 62 Million, so closer to 1 in 21 of the population.

Interesting map though.

I was going to upload a graphic to show how i thought the roads in my area were pretty safe, but then i looked at the triangles and circle's closer up and saw my couple of scrapes there aswell

Here is the graphic http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/5065/crashpd.jpg

Red round the box are people i knew personally and black is someone who was known to my family, quite shocking really to think thats just in and around 30 odd miles of my small village

33,000 deaths in a 10 year period? We must be insane to tolerate this