Task group aiming to cut Shropshire road accidents

The number of crashes in the county has stayed at about 600 a year in recent years.

But councillors on Shropshire Council's performance management scrutiny committee say the roads are a "real real problem" and asked for the issue to be looked at.

Councillor Roger Evans, for Longden, said: "We've got a a problem in Shropshire, a real real problem which we need to actually do something about.

"Our residents are getting killed and serious injured.

"We would not be doing the right thing for our residents if we don't look at this in some depth, we need a task and finish group."

Councillor Gwilym Butler, for Cleobury Mortimer, told the committee that it is about educating people.

He said: "The Safer Roads Partnership is the biggest bureaucratic nightmare I've ever seen in my life.

"It has the same policy for Dudley and Shrewsbury town centre as it does for Clun.

"A lot of this is about education. Whenever I read about fatalities they're usually people from Dudley or Cardiff but going through Shropshire.

"Shouldn't we be talking with our neighbouring councils about educating their residents about our roads?"

The scrutiny meeting was discussing an analysis of slight, serious and fatal road traffic accidents that went to cabinet last week.

System

Tom Dodds, Shropshire Council’s information, intelligence and insight manager, said of the report: “West Mercia Police changed to the 'Crash' system in December 2015.

"This approach uses a prescribed set of conditions to determine the scale of severity for casualties and relies less on the judgement of police officers.

"It is likely that the reporting of injury severity is now more consistent and accurate, consequently this has shown an increase.

"A noticeable increase in the number of people recorded in the figures for killed and seriously injured in 2016 occurred at the same time as the new methodology was implemented.

“Early indications of national data for 2015 and 2016 show an increase in the reporting of serious injuries by between five per cent to 15 per cent.

"The increase in Shropshire has been 23 per cent. There may be other factors which have contributed to this, such as an increase in vehicle usage when the economy improves, but the number of all road traffic accidents in Shropshire has remained consistent at roughly 600 per year for 2012 to 2016.”