The latest Department for Transport figures for road casualties have showed that 1,695 people were killed in crashes in 2022, up from 1,558 a year earlier.

It showed that road deaths in Britain rose 9% last year, leading to calls for the Government to give the issue “the attention and resources it deserves”.

Three out of four fatalities were male, and 384 were aged under 30.

Last year’s total number of road deaths represents a decline of 1% from 2013 and 3% compared with 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic affected travel patterns.

Commenting on today’s release of provisional road casualty statistics, Rebecca Guy, Road Safety Manager at RoSPA, said: “From reported road casualty results we can see that there has been a three per cent decline in casualties overall, with cyclists and motorcyclists disproportionately affected. Shockingly, of all fatalities in 2022, 75 per cent of fatalities were male, with 62 per cent of all casualties male too.

“When examining data on motorcyclist casualties, we can see there has been a YOY increase since 2019 of 5 per cent. That will, in part, be due to the pandemic – but could also be related to the vast number of people joining the gig economy to supplement their income.

“At RoSPA, we would like to see road casualty data published as frequently as possible to allow us and the Government to analyse trends and risk factors faster, so that we can save more lives and prevent tragedies from happening.”