The Department for Transport (DfT) today published their Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: Main Results 2014 which revealed that:
- There was an increase in the number of reported road deaths to 1,775 fatalities in 2014. This is 4% (62 deaths) higher than in 2013. It is the third lowest annual total fatalities on record after 2012 and 2013.
- The number of people seriously injured in accidents reported to the police rose by 5% to 22,807 casualties in 2014. This is the first rise in serious injuries since 1994.
- Overall there were a total of 194,477 reported casualties of all severities in 2014, and increase of 6% on 2013 and the first increase in overall casualties since 1997.
- Almost three-quarters of the increase in fatalities were accounted for by pedestrians. There were 446 pedestrian fatalities in 2014, up 12% (or 48 deaths) from the 2013 level. The number of pedestrians aged +60 who were killed increased by 45 between 2013 and 2014 accounting for a significant proportion of the increase in fatalities.
David Davies, PACTS Executive Director, commented:
“The official 2014 road casualty figures for Great Britain, released today (25th June) by the DfT, have proved even worse than expected. There was a 4% increase in the number of people killed and a 5% increase in those seriously injured.”
“This level of death and injury represents personal tragedies for thousands of families and huge costs to the health service and the British economy. Most of these deaths are preventable. They should not be seen as an acceptable cost of doing business.”
“This should be a wake up call for the Government and administrations across the UK to take action so that casualties go down, not up.”
The Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: Main Results 2014 report is available here on the DfT website, along with the main results tables and an infographic sheet.
The DfT have also released a series of fact sheets based on the data from the 2013 Reported Road Casualties GB, available here.
