Road accident casualties cost Sunderland £72million in a year - 10 deaths and 101 serious accidents revealed in new report

The cost of road casualties and the level of injuries and deaths in Sunderland has been set out in a report to councillors.

Between January and December 2019, a total of 536 ‘road user casualties’ were reported on Wearside.

This included around 10 fatalities, 101 serious incidents and 425 slight incidents over the period.

The figures were recorded by Northumbria Police and cover collisions and accidents that involved personal injury to someone.

While road user casualties have increased by 1.5% compared to 2018 (528), data over a 10-year period suggests there is a ‘downward trend’ in the number of overall casualties on Sunderland’s roads.

The figures and further analysis on the ‘economic cost of casualties’ were included in a road safety report prepared for Sunderland City Council’s Economic Prosperity Scrutiny Committee.

RELATED: These are the 10 most dangerous roads in Sunderland, according to figures

According to the annual report, the 2019 data gives an average economic cost of £134,000 per casualty, which is higher than national and regional rates.

And the cost of casualties, the report adds, has a “significant impact upon Sunderland’s local economy.”

The Department for Transport gives guidance for calculating the cost of casualties, which includes factors ranging from police and medical costs, to repairs, loss of productivity from injured workers, and other “human costs” such as the distress suffered by those involved in accidents.

“The key thing to say about the 536 incidents that we have had on our roads is we have very few hotspots in the city,” said transport development manager for the council, Paul Lewins.

“Those 536 casualties are distributed throughout the city – Hetton, Houghton, Washington, the city centre – there are very few, if any, locations where we have had more than two incidents in a localised spot.

“A lot of this I believe has been down to the engineering work that the council has done to address areas of concern, which have been mainly junctions and we made improvements there to reduce the severity of related incidents occurring.”

The council officer was speaking at a virtual meeting of the council’s economy scrutiny panel on Tuesday, September 8, which was held via videolink and broadcast live on YouTube in line with Covid-19 guidance.

Identifying problems and improving road safety

Councillors heard that road casualty data helped to highlight specific areas of road safety work and groups that needed to be targeted in upcoming publicity campaigns.

Mr Lewins added: “What we need to be doing now is looking further afield to see what the trends of these 536 incidents are.

“For this year this is why we’re targeting pedestrians and the elderly which we see as key to getting those figures down.”

The annual report presented to the panel included an overview of road safety services, partnership work schemes and campaigns running across the city.

This included the ‘heads up bozo’ campaign which saw stickers and branding placed at crossings, footways and pedestrian areas to help prevent people being distracted by phone content while walking near traffic.

Council bosses also revealed plans for ‘priority ranking assessments’ which aim to focus more resources into community-related traffic issues.

Currently in the draft stage, the scheme needs to be tested on existing and potential schemes before its planned launch in 2021.

‘Daft way’ of dealing with road safety issues

Cllr Heather Fagan welcomed the move, adding she had faced difficulties under the current system.

“When you know and residents can tell you that there’s speeding happening on a particular road and we report it and say can we get some traffic monitoring in to prove this point, the answer tends to be ‘there’s been no accidents on that road in the last three years so no.’”

She added: “When you can see that it’s an accident waiting to happen, it just seems a bit of a daft way to do it, waiting for an accident to happen before we can get something done.”

Transport boss, Mr Lewins, responded: “That has been the case in the past, this is why we’re trying to come up with this new methodology of doing that.”

He added: “Certainly as the number of accidents and collisions have reduced throughout the city, we don’t get those hotspots so we do need to look further to make sure that we’re supporting the communities and members in the work that we’re doing.

“It’s certainly something we’re looking at. The only bit of caution I would express is that we have done a lot of monitoring of speeds on our roads over previous years.

“And often when residents have sworn down that it has been an issue, when we have actually gone out and done the survey work it hasn’t been to that case.

“But we do think that the community does have concern and we’re trying to see if we can address those issues.”

A message from the Editor:

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to the Sunderland Echo website and enjoy unlimited access to local news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.sunderlandecho.com/subscriptions to sign up.