Smethwick road to receive £750,000 safety upgrade
A road in the Black Country will receive a £750,000 safety upgrade under a major scheme to prevent fatal and serious injuries nationally.
The A4030 – between the A456 Hagley Road and A457 – in Sandwell will receive the boost from the Department for Transport's Safer Roads Fund 3.
It is one of 27 schemes which have received cash from the £47.5m funding pot which will reduce the risk of collisions and congestions.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: "Britain’s roads are some of the safest in the world, but we are always looking at ways to help keep motorists and all road users safer.
"That’s why we’re investing more than £2 million to improve roads across the West Midlands and this is the first crucial step to ensuring local councils have the support they need to keep everyone safe, while also reducing congestion and emissions."
The funding allocation has been based on data independently surveyed and provided by the Road Safety Foundation. The data analysed is based on a road safety risk, looking at data on those killed and seriously injured alongside traffic levels.
The previous rounds of the award-winning Safer Roads Fund focused on treating the 50 highest-risk A-road sections in England with enhanced road safety engineering interventions, and the scheme is set to prevent around 1,450 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years.
According to Road Safety Foundation analysis, early estimates suggest the £47.5 million investment should prevent around 760 fatal and serious injuries over the next 20 years, with a benefit to society of £420 million.
Dr Suzy Charman, executive director of the Road Safety Foundation, said: "The commitment and funding announced today is transformational for road safety teams in local authorities across the country. It will allow them to proactively reduce risk and make these 27 roads safer and more inviting for all road users.
"Systematic changes have already had a big impact on road death and serious injury, for example seatbelts and airbags protect lives when crashes happen. In the same way we can design roads so that when crashes happen people can walk away, by clearing or protecting roadsides, putting in cross hatching to add space between vehicles, providing safer junctions like roundabouts or adding signalisation and/or turning pockets, and including facilities for walking and cycling.”
To date, £100m has been provided through the programme to improve the 50 most dangerous roads in England, the majority of which are rural roads. Some of the improvements already made include improved signage, safer pedestrian crossings and better designed junctions.
This additional investment builds on the Government’s plans for a specialised team of inspectors to build the country’ first ever Road Safety investigation branch. The team will look at how and why incidents happen and build an enhanced understanding of how we can better mitigate collisions.
