Nigel Canham

Friends and alloys Column

The Faces - The Cars - The News

Splashed across the nationals this week have been stories about the safety of Britain’s roads.

According to the charity, Road Safety Foundation, half of all fatal crashes take place on one-tenth of the country’s roads.

In a new report it suggests the most dangerous spots on our 28,000 miles of
A-roads and motorways are in Scotland and northern England.

The A537 between Macclesfield and Buxton won the dubious title of being the most risky.

The foundation wants the government to target its roads budget at improving safety on the most dangerous stretches.

Its report, Saving Lives for Less, suggests the high cost of emergency services and hospitals could be avoided by spending small sums at accident blackspots.

It found that a third of all fatal and serious crashes happen at junctions and that single roads carry six times the risk of motorways and twice that of dual carriageways.

A quarter of all fatal or serious crashes on A-roads or motorways involved a motorcyclist.

The most improved road was named as the A40 between Llandovery and Carmarthen.

As a result of improved junctions, markings and anti-skid surfaces, the number of serious accidents fell by 75 per cent.

Good news for us here in the south west is that very few of our roads are classified as dangerous.

The A38 is just about as good as they come and even our more minor A-roads are put in the low-medium risk category, the second safest.

It would be hard to argue with any of the foundation’s findings but to my mind there’s something absolutely fundamental that has been overlooked – driver skill.

Just this week I renewed my membership of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, not because I want to feel a cut above, but because the organisation seeks to tackle the biggest single cause of accidents – bad driving.

How many times have the headlines screamed FOG CLAIMS LIVES IN ROADS CHAOS or some such thing?

Sorry, but even the densest cloud of water vapour is a remarkably soft and benign thing.

A very hard lump of metal being driven blindly at
70mph or more is not.

Don’t wait for the council to paint a few extra lines on the road or erect a safety sign or two, get some training and drive to survive.

And never forget what my IAM instructor Brian Western said: ‘Drive with your eyes on main beam.’

Visit www.iam.org.uk and look up the details of the Exeter and Torbay group or call Sue Butt on 01392 433105.