An international report into road safety has criticised single carriageway roads in England for the dangers of high speed head on vehicle collisions.

The Road Safety Foundation report inspected nearly all 4,349 miles of motorway and major A roads in the country and graded them between one and four stars.

It found that nearly two-thirds of single carriageway A roads are unsafe at their current speed limit because of high speed traffic being separated by just a white line which would almost certainly have serious casualties in the event of head on road accidents.

The report gave only half of England’s motorways four stars with the biggest concern being a lack of barriers to stop motorists who lose control, crashing into trees or going down embankments.

However, it did praise their safety measures for junctions and head-on collisions.

It named a 10-mile stretch of the A5 between Daventry and Rugby as the country’s most dangerous trunk road.

The Foundation, the UK arm of the European Road Assessment Programme, has claimed that road crashes cost the economy £18bn a year.

Joanne Hill, director of the Foundation, said: “Our assessment of trunk roads considers three key elements: the protection provided if vehicles run off the road; the risk of head-on collisions; and the safety of junctions. Motorways are our safest roads, scoring well on two of these factors but half do not protect road users who, for whatever reason, run off the road.” 

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