A34 'safe road' claim "defies all sensible logic," says councillor

An East Ilsley parish councillor has described claims that the A34 is a ‘safe road’ as “totally beyond all sensible logic”.
The Road Safety Foundation and the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP) compiled a map of Britain’s busiest roads and banded each road from one to five according to risk, with the A34 placed within the ‘safest’ band one category.
The risk was calculated by comparing the frequency of road crashes resulting in death and serious injury on every stretch of road with how much traffic each road is carrying.
However, speaking to the Newbury Weekly News this week, Andrew Sharp ridiculed the claims.
He said: “It is just a ridiculous, non-sensical thing to say and is totally beyond all sensible logic. There are at least two or three accidents a week on that road and I think if you asked anyone whether they felt it was a safe road to travel on they would say no.”
Recently, a spokesman for the Road Safety Foundation said: “People may be surprised to see the likes of the A34 being considered safe, because they might regularly hear of accidents on these roads and automatically think that means it is high risk.
“However, it is important to remember that the data considers the individual risks of a crash compared with the amount of traffic, which, in the case of the A34, is a lot.”
An average of 45,451 cars a day used the the 50.3km stretch of the A34 between the M3 and M4 between 2007 and 2011, with 44 people either killed or seriously injured.
During the same time period, the 53.9km stretch of the A34, which runs between the M4 and M40, had an average daily traffic flow of 60,016 vehicles and 73 people were either killed or seriously injured in that time.