Road deaths stay under 50

A total of 48 people lost their lives on Lincolnshire’s roads last year, and while numbers remain below pre-2020 levels, the local road safety partnership is keen to stress that all death and injury on our highways is avoidable.

The Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership will present its annual report at a meeting of Lincolnshire County Council’s Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee next Tuesday (March 19), writes Local Democracy Reporter Ellis Karran.
In 2023 there was a total of 48 deaths on Lincolnshire’s roads, which is the same figure as 2022, and eight higher than in 2021.
However, 2020 and the two years pre-COVID recorded 50 deaths on the roads, and the number of serious injuries were also higher before the pandemic.
A total of 378 serious injuries were reported from road traffic collisions in Lincolnshire last year, compared to 391 in 2022 and 413 in 2021. The year 2023 was 21 per cent lower than 2019’s total of 480 serious injuries, and the lowest in the last five years.
Despite this, the number of killed or seriously injured casualties have gone up by 5.78 per cent from 2013. This is more than ten per cent below the national figure and among the best performing in the country.
Nearby Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire have seen increases of 15 per cent, 20 per cent and 25 per cent respectively in the last decade.
The fatal collisions happened most frequently between the hours of 2pm and 5pm – typically seen as rush hour times.
A closer look into the data found that the highest percentage of casualties on Lincolnshire roads were in East Lindsey, where over 30 per cent of the population are aged 65 and over.
The figure is almost 13 per cent higher than the national average of over 65s by area, and mature drivers were identified as one of the highest risk groups for these incidents alongside 17 to 24-year-olds and motorcycle and bike riders. Close to 55 per cent of the 48 deaths occurred on A roads, and 25 per cent on B roads. So 79.55 per cent of 2023 road fatalities in Lincolnshire were on main roads, compared to 96 per cent in 2022.
The Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership (LRSP), is adopting a strategy that works around the theory of every death or serious injury on the road being preventable.
One of the ways it seeks to continue bringing numbers down is by working closely with Lincolnshire Police on enforcement, as well as informing and educating the public on safer practices.
Some £2 million of Safer Roads Fund schemes have been delivered by the LRSP across the last 12 months.
The partnership has called on a “clear political strategy for Lincolnshire” to make further improvements, and seeks to create both a vision and mission statement for the county’s road network across the coming years.
This will be done using what is called the Safe System, which implements five pillars into road safety provision.