Newly released statistics show there were 971 injury collisions on Somerset’s roads in 2018 – the lowest number ever reported in the county.

The number of people killed or seriously injured remained at 154, the same as in 2017 – although the number of road deaths did increase by 18 per cent to 26. This is the highest number since 2014.

Injury collision data is collected by Avon and Somerset Police and analysed by Somerset County Council’s Road Safety Team.

The Road Casualty Review is published each year to highlight trends and help shape strategies to improve road safety.

Councillor John Woodman, Somerset County Council’s Cabinet Member for Highways, said: “It is good news that we have seen fewer collisions in 2018, but the fact that more people died is a significant concern.

“We all have a responsibility to make sure we’re taking road safety seriously by making the right decisions every time we travel.

“As a council we will continue to prioritise road safety and work closely with our partners and communities to promote safe travel and deliver our road safety strategy.

“We are also keen to involve local businesses through our sponsorship programme. If you’d like to see how you can support our work to improve road safety then please do get in touch.”

Somerset County Council aims to prevent collisions in a number of ways – from engineering work, targeted training of road users, or requesting support from the police. The Council works closely with a number of other partners to promote safe road use.

In 2018 Somerset Road Safety provided training or advice to over 28,000 members of the public. This included meeting 5,130 people at public events, training 1,710 motorcyclists, reaching 910 senior drivers through Route 60+ workshops, and teaching over 10,000 school children at various education programmes.

The 2018 Road Casualty Review analyses collision and casualty statistics, comparing them to the previous five-year period and focusing on defined target groups – such as road user types and different age groups. You can read the report in full by clicking on this link 2018 Somerset  Casualty Review

The Somerset Road Safety team is active on social media with posts in 2017 achieving over 1.9 million impressions on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

More details of all available sponsorship opportunities, and how sponsorship can benefit both your organisation and the residents of Somerset can be found at www.somersetroadsafety.org.

Please get in touch by emailing roadsafety@somerset.gov.uk or phone 01823 423430.

Road deaths year by year

2013: 28 collisions, 28 casualties

2014: 32 collisions, 33 casualties

2015: 22 collisions, 22 casualties

2016: 23 collisions, 25 casualties

2017: 20 collisions, 22 casualties

2018: 23 collisions, 26 casualties

• For 2019, figures recorded up to the end of June show there were 11 fatalities, 65 serious and 529 slight injury casualties.