Country road facts

More than half (52%) of fatal crashes in Britain are on country roads. Per mile travelled, these roads are the most dangerous roads for all kinds of road user:

•     Car occupants are twice as likely to be killed on a country road as on an urban road.

•     Motorcyclists are more than twice as likely to be killed on a country road as on an urban road.

•     Cyclists are almost three times more likely to be killed on a country road than on an urban road.

Speed is a major factor in country road crashes. A study of country single-carriageway roads estimated that a 10% increase in average speed results in a 30% increase in fatal and serious crashes. The most common crash types on country roads are collisions at intersections, head-on collisions and running off the road  – these are all related to excessive speed.

Overtaking: Brake’s advice

Overtaking on single carriageway roads is one of the most dangerous manoeuvres drivers can perform – and is usually unnecessary. Overtaking is dangerous because is impossible to accurately judge the speed and distance of approaching traffic. This lack of judgement can easily be fatal when travelling at speed on the wrong side of the road. If two vehicles headed towards each other are both travelling at 60mph the gap between decreases by about 60 metres every second.

It is therefore incredibly dangerous to overtake on rural roads, where there will rarely be enough straight, visible road ahead to be certain that nothing is coming in the opposite direction. It is also simply not worth it: if you are travelling at 55mph, and you overtake someone doing 50mph, and you have ten miles left of your journey, you’ll only arrive one minute faster than if you’d stayed behind the slower vehicle. However, in reality you wouldn’t even save this much time, as you would still need to slow down for bends, junctions, other traffic, and if entering lower speed limits.

Brake advises overtaking should be avoided unless absolutely essential, for instance to overtake an extremely slow moving vehicle on a long, open stretch, without speeding or traffic coming the other way. Otherwise just hang back, relax and enjoy the journey.

Calls for government action

Brake is calling for the government to lower the default speed limit on our rural network from 60 to 50mph, and require local authorities to implement lower limits of 40, 30 and 20mph where there are particular risks, including 20mph in villages.

This should be coupled with wider traffic enforcement, including more speed cameras, especially average cameras, and investment in roads policing, as well as education warning of the dangers of speed and overtaking on rural roads to encourage compliance with lower limits.

Brake also calls for investment in far more traffic-free cycle and walking paths connecting rural communities, as well as frequent, cheap and well-marketed rural bus and train services, to discourage reliance on cars and encourage use of active travel and public transport.