Accidents on rural roads - a study in Cambridgeshire

Wyn HughesTransportation Department, Cambridgeshire County Council

Cost: 29,000 per year, over four years
Published: July 1994

Following on from the success of the urban road accidents research project with Birmingham City Council, it was decided that a similar study investigating rural road accidents should be undertaken jointly with an appropriate local highways authority. Cambridgeshire was chosen partly for its accident record, having one of the highest casualty rates per head of population in Great Britain, but more importantly because the Transportation Department of the County Council has a well-established, comprehensive, and flexible geographical information system-based Traffic Accident Reporting System (TARS) to facilitate the project.

The initial phase of the four-year study was to conduct an in-depth review of the available STATS 19 data in order to:

• establish the characteristics of rural traffic accidents in the county;
• identify recurring features of those accidents; and
• where necessary to recommend priorities for those areas where additional research would be required to determine underlying behavioural or environmental factors involved in rural road accidents.

Throughout the project, Cambridgeshire's rural road accident problem was placed within the national and regional perspectives.

This initial study found that single carriageway 'A' roads in rural areas were the most dangerous in Britain. Although only 26 per cent of traffic accidents in Britain occurred on rural roads, they accounted for nearly 75 per cent of all road deaths. Analysis of the county's traffic accidents bore out this national fact - indeed the proportion of accidents on rural roads in Cambridgeshire rose between 1983 and 1992 from 36 per cent to 44 per cent.

Some major findings were:

• car occupants accounted for 79 per cent of rural road accident injuries in 1992, with heavy and light goods vehicles and motorcycles the other types of transport most likely to be involved;
• road users aged 20-29 years were over-represented in the traffic accident casualty figures - making up 16 per cent of the county's population but 30 per cent of its casualties;
• those parts of the county containing the main east-west and north-south traffic arteries experienced the highest proportion of accidents, and three-quarters of accidents at junctions were on strategic roads;
• it was also noted that motorists ran a significant risk of accident involvement when exiting from farms, petrol stations and restaurants onto major roads;
• single-vehicle accidents were over-represented on many types of road, with speeding a major element in accident involvement.

Comparisons were made with Cheshire, Durham, Kent, Dorset, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Humberside, all of which had similar ratios of rural and urban roads.

This project continued with the second study which investigated in depth a selection of accidents on six 'A' class roads in the county (FDN19).