Since 2012, Ageas Insurance has supported the Road Safety Foundation’s work of tracking the nation’s road safety performance, year on year, across thousands of individual road sections.

This map lets you understand the risk ratings of the individual sections of main roads that matter to you, whether they be the roads near your home, your loved ones or on your commute.

In 2019, some £1.7 billion was diverted from elsewhere in the health budget; this sum is the equivalent of around 11,000 double crewed ambulances, 61,000 junior nurses or 2,400 level-3 intensive care beds. At a time where our health service is on Covid-related catch-up, we can take actions that are both humanitarian and make sound economic sense, such as protecting the NHS through road casualty reduction.

Ageas Insurance and the Road Safety Foundation are calling for the government to invest £1.4 billion on roads with the highest potential returns and save thousands of lives.

Ageas

Understanding people and simplifying insurance is what Ageas is all about.

We’re one of the largest insurers in the UK. Over five million people in the UK choose to insure their cars, homes, travels or businesses with Ageas, benefitting from our award-winning service in their time of need.

As the fifth largest UK car insurer, Ageas knows only too well the impact that incidents on the roads can have on its customers, their families and friends, other road users and public services. It’s why we continue to work with the Road Safety Foundation – to reinforce the importance of road safety, helping to make Britain’s roads safer for everyone.

To learn more about Ageas, visit ageas.co.uk

Road Safety Foundation

The Road Safety Foundation (RSF) is a UK charity, founded in 1986, that aims to help reduce road trauma through employing the Safe System philosophy by:

• Identifying investment packages likely to give high returns and analysing the safety performance of roads over time.
• Providing the approach, tools and training necessary to support road authorities in taking a proactive approach to road risk reduction.
• Undertaking research to progress knowledge and policy.

To learn more about the Road Safety Foundation, visit roadsafetyfoundation.org

Acknowledgements and context

We are indebted to the Department for Transport (DfT) for allowing use of crash data and traffic data and to Agilisys for preparing these datasets to enable the creation of the map.

The risk is calculated by comparing the frequency of road crashes resulting in death and serious injury on every stretch of road with how much traffic each road is carrying. Crash information is for 2017-2019. Traffic is calculated using the averages for 2017-2019 weighted by section length. Risk rates on road sections vary but it is expected that, on average, those off the ‘A’ road network will have higher rates than sections on it. Generally, motorways and high quality dual carriageway roads function in a similar way and are safer than single carriageway or mixed carriageway roads.