Latest figures from the Department for Transport published on Thursday (25/06/09) show that injuries from reported road traffic accidents have fallen since again 2007.

The report Road Casualties Great Britain: 2008  - Main Results showed that the number of people killed in road accidents reported to the police fell by 14 per cent, from 2,946 in 2007 to 2,538 in 2008. There were just under 231,000 road casualties in 2008.

The number of deaths among car users in 2008 was 1,257, representing a fall of 12 per cent on 2007 figures. The total number of reported casualties among car users was 149,168 – an 8 per cent decrease on 2007 figures.

Casualties among children ialso fell by 8 per cent overall, with 2,807 children killed in 2008 – 1,784 of these were pedestrians. There was a 2 per cent increase in children killed on the roads in 2008, with 124 deaths. In 2007, a total of 121 children were killed on roads,  the lowest figure ever.

There were also reductions in deaths among pedestrians (11 per cent fewer) and pedal cyclists (15 per cent) in 2008 – although the number of seriously injured cyclists rose by 1 per cent and cyclist injuries overall rose by 1 per cent.

A total of 493 motorcyclists were killed in 2008, a 16 per cent reduction on figures for 2007.

A total of 170,500 road accidents involving personal injury were reported to the police in 2008 – a 6 per cent fall on the 2007 total.

In 2000, the government announced targets for reducing death and injury in road accidents by 2010 .

The latest figures for 2008 show that there were 40 per cent fewer people killed or seriously injured, compared with figures for 1994-98, meeting the government target. Child deaths and serious injuries fell by 59 per cent during the same period, 9 per cent more than the government target of 50 per cent. The reduction in slight casualty rate set by the government for the same period was 10 per cent and has been provisionally estimated at 36 per cent.

In April 2009, the government published A Safer Way: consultation on making Britain’s roads the safest in the world, which set out proposals for road safety strategies for 2010-20.

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