A new safety campaign has been launched as analysis shows there are 70% more deaths on rural roads than urban highways.
Leading rural insurer NFU Mutual has partnered with the four UK farming unions, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Farm Safety Foundation, the British Horse Society and the Older Drivers Forum to create the Code for Countryside Roads which can be downloaded and printed for everyone to use.
Collisions on rural roads are around four times more likely to result in a fatality, according to the latest Department for Transport (DfT) figures, reports Automotive Blog.
In 2023, an average of one in every 32 collisions (969 of 31,183) on rural highways resulted in a death, compared to one in every 122 (571 of 69,706) on urban roads.
A survey conducted in November by NFU Mutual found that 13% of people had been in a collision on a rural road, rising to almost one in five (19%) for those that live in the countryside. This compares to one in 10 people living in urban areas who have been involved in a collision on a rural road.
More than one fifth of respondents (21%) admitted to being uncomfortable travelling on rural roads, with a third of people without a car saying they’re uncomfortable on countryside roads.
More than half of respondents said one of their biggest concern when it comes to rural road safety was blind corners (56%) and narrow roads (51%), while road quality (48%), driver impatience (45%) and people breaking the speed limit (42%) were also high on the list.
Around a third (32%) were worried about navigating vulnerable road users and a quarter (24%) were concerned about dealing with agricultural traffic.
“Rural roads are the arteries of our countryside, vital to the rural economy and serving to connect us all to the benefits of the great outdoors,” said Nick Turner, Chief Executive of NFU Mutual.
“Every road death is an avoidable tragedy, and every road user has a responsibility to protect themselves and others, but the disparity in safety between urban and rural roads and the higher risk shouldered by vulnerable road users suggests that more can be done.
“That is why NFU Mutual has been campaigning for several years to improve rural road safety by raising awareness of the risks inherent to countryside roads, and why we are proud to publish a Code for Countryside Roads to provide a clear guide on how people should use rural roads.”
