New road casualty stats by local authority

A new DfT website was launched today, which explains why, by and large, I avoid cycling on-road around my home territory of Haslemere, Surrey.  OK, I ride to the station, and I ride to the town centre and its shops, but I can do that on quiet residential streets and lanes where traffic is light.  For someone who was minded to do the same from here, however, it would be a different story.

Here are a few numbers gleaned from the site.  For 2011, comparing Surrey with its next-door neighbour Hampshire (which, for these purposes, excludes the main cities of Portsmouth and Southampton.  Surrey County Council covers all urban and rural communities within the county):

2011			Hampshire		Surrey
Resident population ('000)			1306		1134
Total road length (miles)			5518		3437
Total miles driven (million miles)			9237		8459
Road safety spend
	Total (£'000 pa)		7597		4427
	per resident (£ pa)		5.82		3.90
	per mile of road (£ per mile)		1377		1288
	per mile driven (£ per million m)		0.82		0.52
Total casualties
	per 10,000 pop		31.93		50.74
	per 100m miles		38.64		55.44

I haven’t shown casualties per mile.  In many ways that is a false comparison because it is inevitable that a big city will do badly on that score.  The Cities of London and Westminster for example score worst of all on that measure, but the volume of traffic, motorised, cyclised or pedestrian, is far higher – true casualty rates per person or per mile travelled are much worse in the country.

I also have shown only total casualties.  You could look at KSIs (killed or seriously injured) but in practical terms, the thing which deters people from walking or cycling is not the risk of death, rather it is the risk of any form of injury, even slight, a fact which the dinosaur cycling advocacy groups even now don’t fully recognise when they cite the surely-now-busted hypothesis of “safety in numbers”

Surrey’s spend on road safety is considerably lower, not only in pure value terms, but also by reference to its population, the size of its road network, and the total vehicle mileage driven.  Total casualties are considerably higher.

Well, there’s a surprise!