A growth in the number of cars on the roads and an increase in the distances they travel mean that there has been a great rise in Britain’s average daily traffic flow. In 2004 there were 32.3 million licensed motor vehicles on our roads and these travelled a total of 499 billion kilometers on Britain’s roads.
Hundreds of people are killed or suffer serious personal injuries as a result of road traffic accidents every year and the number of fatalities has remained fairly constant over the last ten years.
52 % of people killed in road accidents in 2004 were car users. 4% of fatalities were cyclists and 18% were the result of motorcycle accidents. In 2004, 671 pedestrians were killed in road accidents in Great Britain. This was 21 % of all deaths from road accidents.
But the UK roads seem fairly safe when compared to some other EU countries whose road accident rates and accident compensation claims are excessive.
*A replacement vehicle can usually be supplied within 4-6 working hours, where there is an admission of liability from the other person’s insurance company. If this person is not known, their insurance details are not known, they are uninsured or there is a potential dispute over who caused the accident, a replacement vehicle cannot be provided.
