Where are the safest and most dangerous places to drive in the UK?

Under "tougher" plans to tackle road deaths and injuries in England and Wales, the government has announced measures to make over-70s take compulsory eye tests every three years or lose their driving licence.

But are they really needed? Motorists over the age of 70 already self-report their medical fitness to drive every three years, and British roads are safer now than they've ever been. In 2023, the latest year for which the Department for Transport has published data, the casualty rate on British roads fell to 398 per billion vehicle miles.

It's the first time that figure has been under 400, and has halved since just 2006. In 1960, the casualty rate was 10 times higher than it is now.

The total number of people killed on the UK's roads also reached a record low in 2023, other than the COVID-affected years of 2020 and 2021. There were 1,624 people killed in total, just under half of which were in cars.

This figure has plateaued somewhat since 2010, however, after rapid improvements between 2006 and 2010. There was a similar plateau between 1994 and 2006 before the last significant piece of road safety legislation was introduced.

The 2006 Road Safety Act introduced higher fines and more points for the most severe speeding offences, as well as vastly expanding the use of speed awareness courses. It was also the first year that people could get points on their licence for using their phone.

In the four years that followed, there was a 40% decrease in deaths among road users. In the 13 years since then, it's fallen just 12%.

There had been a slight rise in deaths among older drivers for a few years between 2014 and 2019, but that has started to fall again now. There are now fewer deaths among over-70s compared with either the under-30s, people aged 30-49, or those between 50 and 69.

In 2019, there were a similar number of deaths among people of each of these age cohorts. Academic studies have previously found that older people are also more likely to develop symptoms of depression, be admitted to care facilities, and even have a higher mortality rate, once they stop driving.

The academics found that those links remained even after adjusting for other factors like baseline health and cognitive ability. Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: "It is certainly good for our eye health as we age to have a regular eye test - every two years the NHS advises - but this doesn't automatically mean that a compulsory eye test at age 70 is appropriate.

People can develop eye problems at any age so why confine such an approach only to those aged 70 and not to younger drivers too?"From the data we have seen, there is no reason to suppose that eye problems lie behind a significant proportion of accidents. While there may be a case for introducing a regular mandatory eye test for drivers of all ages, it is not clear that this would have a big impact on the numbers of serious accidents involving older drivers." Are younger drivers a danger to themselves? Edmund King, president of the Automobile Association, said that the government's strategy is "much overdue.