The UK's worst accident hotspots

[SVS]

OK, which as the highest number of collisions per mile driven? Thoughts?

[davepoth]

SVS said:

OK, which as the highest number of collisions per mile driven? Thoughts?

It's whichever one is most rural. I voted Rutland as a guess, it sounds rural.

[brisel]

I voted for a rural area for more KSIs per mile of road, but the OP's criteria makes it more likely to be an urban one. I'd be interested to see which one. When will all be revealed?

[7mike]

davepoth said:

It's whichever one is most rural. I voted Rutland as a guess, it sounds rural.

There are significantly more collisions on urban roads than in rural areas. Rural areas do however see the largest proportion of fatals. Op I won't spoil your poll with a link to your source

[davepoth]

7mike said:

davepoth said:

It's whichever one is most rural. I voted Rutland as a guess, it sounds rural.

There are significantly more collisions on urban roads than in rural areas. Rural areas do however see the largest proportion of fatals. Op I won't spoil your poll with a link to your source

It's per driven mile. In those terms rural roads are orders of magnitude more dangerous than urban roads.

[Steffan]

davepoth said:

7mike said:

davepoth said:

It's whichever one is most rural. I voted Rutland as a guess, it sounds rural.

There are significantly more collisions on urban roads than in rural areas. Rural areas do however see the largest proportion of fatals. Op I won't spoil your poll with a link to your source

It's per driven mile. In those terms rural roads are orders of magnitude more dangerous than urban roads.

Absolutely correct. One of the features in assessing drivers risk of accidents must be the length of time that they drive. Most drivers improve with experience. But any driver travelling say 50,000 miles a year MUST have a greater risk of accidents overall in driving because of the exposure. Similarly drivers who drive less than 300 miles a year must have a beer overall risk.

Against that we must weigh the quality and observation of the driver, Like every other human activity some people are better than average some are not.

[trashbat]

davepoth said:

7mike said:

davepoth said:

It's whichever one is most rural. I voted Rutland as a guess, it sounds rural.

There are significantly more collisions on urban roads than in rural areas. Rural areas do however see the largest proportion of fatals. Op I won't spoil your poll with a link to your source

It's per driven mile. In those terms rural roads are orders of magnitude more dangerous than urban roads.

What's your reasoning for this?

[davepoth]

trashbat said:

davepoth said:

7mike said:

davepoth said:

It's whichever one is most rural. I voted Rutland as a guess, it sounds rural.

There are significantly more collisions on urban roads than in rural areas. Rural areas do however see the largest proportion of fatals. Op I won't spoil your poll with a link to your source

It's per driven mile. In those terms rural roads are orders of magnitude more dangerous than urban roads.

What's your reasoning for this?

The weight of evidence. Take a read.

http://www.eurorap.org/knowledge-base/library-home...

Although more accidents occur on busy roads, like motorways, they handle many more cars than rural roads. If you divide the number of accidents on that particular stretch of road by the number of cars that use it, you'll find that a car is much less likely to have a bad accident on a motorway than on a rural road.

Edited by davepoth on Thursday 28th March 21:05

[trashbat]

davepoth said:

The weight of evidence. Take a read.

http://www.eurorap.org/knowledge-base/library-home...

Although more accidents occur on busy roads, like motorways, they handle many more cars than rural roads. If you divide the number of accidents on that particular stretch of road by the number of cars that use it, you'll find that a car is much less likely to have a bad accident on a motorway than on a rural road.

Edited by davepoth on Thursday 28th March 21:05

Unarguably the rate of accidents per mile is lower on motorways than rural roads. They are relatively safe, high volume, long distance mechanisms.

City roads though, and your claim is doubtful. The number of journeys compared to number of miles travelled is very high. The number of vehicles you're likely to encounter on a ten minute trip is high, but the number of miles travelled is low. Then what happens?

I've seen the article that the OP is referring to.

[davepoth]

trashbat said:

narguably the rate of accidents per mile is lower on motorways than rural roads. They are relatively safe, high volume, long distance mechanisms.

City roads though, and your claim is doubtful. The number of journeys compared to number of miles travelled is very high. The number of vehicles you're likely to encounter on a ten minute trip is high, but the number of miles travelled is low. Then what happens?

I've seen the article that the OP is referring to.

OP said per driven mile; analogous to the EuroRAP standard of accidents per passenger kilometre. In which case rural roads are by far and away the most dangerous roads. A road with 10 cars a minute and one accident a year is ten times more dangerous than a road with 100 cars a minute and one accident a year by that method of counting, which is considered the best way by those who count such things.

[Steffan]

davepoth said:

trashbat said:

narguably the rate of accidents per mile is lower on motorways than rural roads. They are relatively safe, high volume, long distance mechanisms.

City roads though, and your claim is doubtful. The number of journeys compared to number of miles travelled is very high. The number of vehicles you're likely to encounter on a ten minute trip is high, but the number of miles travelled is low. Then what happens?

I've seen the article that the OP is referring to.

OP said per driven mile; analogous to the EuroRAP standard of accidents per passenger kilometre. In which case rural roads are by far and away the most dangerous roads. A road with 10 cars a minute and one accident a year is ten times more dangerous than a road with 100 cars a minute and one accident a year by that method of counting, which is considered the best way by those who count such things.

I do think that davepoth is statistically correct in this. As we all know there are many ways to skin a statistical cat. However I do think that this method is generally recognised as the most efficacious assessment. Hence the widespread use.

[trashbat]

davepoth said:

OP said per driven mile; analogous to the EuroRAP standard of accidents per passenger kilometre. In which case rural roads are by far and away the most dangerous roads. A road with 10 cars a minute and one accident a year is ten times more dangerous than a road with 100 cars a minute and one accident a year by that method of counting, which is considered the best way by those who count such things.

There's no answer here. Yes, what you say is true, but how did you arrive at the conclusion that the urban road has one accident per year?

This suggests that there are more collisions in urban areas, albeit less severe ones. That's not per passenger mile though, so to answer the exam question, you have to guess at what would be higher. Like I said, lots more urban journeys but the journeys are short.

Now this does have more data, but again not very helpfully. Page 21 shows more people killed in urban areas, but of course more people live and travel there. Page 112 shows 98k urban vs 48k, but this is just the same problem as with the RoSPA link. On page 222, we do find that the length of the 'rural' road network is just less than double that of urban.

I can't find anything better for the UK - you pointed me at the EuroRAP stuff but you'll have to be more specific if there's something in there. I can find some for the US though. For example, this, taken from this is about fatal crashes per mile. In column B, you can see that a rural crash is much more likely to kill you, but in D, the number of all crashes per mile is higher for urban.