If Cars Are Becoming Safer, Why Are British Roads Getting More Dangerous?

…and what makes January 18th the most dangerous of all? Automologist MAC, who was in the UK recently, explains…

Despite the advent of a myriad of driver aids designed to make driving ever safer, official figures from the UK Gov would suggest that the roads are in fact getting more dangerous. There is a number of reasons for the increase, which include reduction in policing and malfunctioning equipment such as speed cameras. Figures show that in 2020 – yes, when half the country was working from home due to that pesky virus from Wuhan and the roads were far less travelled – fatalities on the roads increased by 5%.

Reports suggest that there have in fact been significant cuts to traffic policing, which has resulted in far fewer arrests for drink driving or speeding. The lack of conspicuous enforcement has resulted in fatalities increasing for the first time in forty years. In the year 2020, some 1,600 people died as a result of car accidents. The UK is still amongst the safest places in the world to drive, though, and to put it into perspective, some 4,600 died in Malaysia in 2020 and in most years, about 12,000 die in the Philippines.

I spent some time driving around the UK in December of 2021 and at the time I was surprised at the lack of noticeable policing. Mr Parr, the HM Inspector of Constabulary, has put the blame on budget cuts to the extent that some police forces now have negligible presence on the road. The trouble is the UK got too good at road safety and as the results fell, the public became a bit indifferent.

As a result, the UK Gov has announced an increase in the budget by about a billion pounds and the recruitment of some 20,000 new police officers, but this may all come too late for those unlucky motorists caught out by the UK’s January the 18th hoodoo. According to Admiral Insurance, the date should become infamous. After studying the past ten years’ data, they found 33% more insurance claims are made on that date than average. According to Lorna Connely, who is the head of Admirals’ claims department, the reason is quite simply bad weather and January the 18th has more of it than other days on average.