Safety improvements plateau on England’s Strategic Road Network

• The number of people killed or seriously injured on England’s strategic road network was 1% higher in 2024 compared with 2023. Traffic volumes also increased by the same proportion which meant casualty rates per mile travelled remained at record lows (outside of the COVID-19 pandemic)
• National Highways has completed 41 of the 43 actions in its Road Period 2 enhanced safety  plan, but is still forecast to miss its safety target
• Stopped Vehicle Detection (SVD) on all-lane-running smart motorways continues to meet national performance requirements. National Highways must ensure that lessons learned from its delayed roadside technology refresh programme improve its delivery in the third road period

National Highways’ safety target

The latest available data show recent improvements in road user safety on England’s strategic road network levelled out in 2024, the Office of Rail and Road said today. ORR’s fourth annual assessment of safety on the strategic road network shows National Highways is set to miss its safety target, set by government in the second Road Investment Strategy.

1,931 people were killed or seriously injured on the strategic road network in 2024, an increase of 23 compared to 2023. However, because traffic rose by a similar proportion over the same period, the casualty rate was unchanged at 19.9 people killed or seriously injured per billion vehicle miles travelled. This measure matches the lowest rate recorded outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.

National Highways has completed 41 of 43 actions in its enhanced safety action plan, which it created at the request of ORR to support closing the gap to its safety target. Covering the period to 2025, some of these actions are not yet reflected in casualty figures, and additional actions have been set out to cover the interim year between Road Period 2 and Road Period 3.  

ORR recognises some areas of road user safety are outside of National Highways’ direct control. As the third road period begins, it is important that National Highways is better able to identify those areas where it does have control or can influence relevant stakeholders, and quantify how its actions contribute to safety improvements.

All-lane-running smart motorways

ORR’s report shows the performance of stopped vehicle detection technology on smart motorways continues to meet national standards. In the first year since delivering all its actions under the smart motorway evidence stocktake and action plan, National Highways is making progress with its evaluation of the effectiveness of these measures, although several years of robust data will be needed before firm conclusions can be drawn. ORR has told National Highways that it should ensure that when the conclusions are ready they are communicated clearly to the public.

In its report, ORR raised concerns about delays to National Highways’ programme to upgrade existing roadside technology, which includes CCTV, MIDAS (Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling), signs and signals. The programme is now due to complete more than a year later than originally planned. National Highways must demonstrate that it has learned the lessons from these delays, including around asset data and integration with existing infrastructure, so that it can reliably and effectively deliver renewals across the wider strategic road network in Road Period 3.

Feras Alshaker, Director, Planning and Performance, said:

Notes to editors

1. The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is the independent economic and safety regulator for Britain’s railways and monitor of National Highways.
2. National Highways is the government-owned company responsible for operating, maintaining and improving England’s strategic road network (SRN), which comprises motorways and major A roads.
3. ORR’s fourth annual assessment of safety performance on the SRN assesses National Highways’ performance in 2024. This is the latest available data for casualties on the SRN.  
4. National Highways’ key safety target is to have halved the number of people killed or seriously injured on the strategic road network by December 2025, compared with a 2005 to 2009 baseline. Because the latest available data covers 2024, ORR is not able to draw a final conclusion on whether National Highways has missed its safety target.  
5. Smart motorway evidence stocktake and action plan  
6. This report does not consider the speed camera anomaly identified on the strategic road network in 2025. A review into this issue has been commissioned by the Department for Transport.  
7. SVD testing takes place retrospectively and does not affect the company’s response to alerts in real time. The company measures SVD performance at a national level against three key metrics:  
   1. detection rates (the proportion of stopped vehicles correctly identified by SVD, target:≥80%);
   2. false discovery rates (the proportion of SVD alerts that are not related to a stopped vehicle event, target: <15%); and
   3. average time to detect stopped vehicles (the elapsed time between a vehicle stopping and an SVD alert being generated, target: ≤20 seconds).