The A6135 Accident reduction group received a report from EuroRAP, the European road Assesment program.  The report finds that 8 out of 10 of the "persistantly higher risk" roads are in the North of England, and more importantly 2 of those are in Barnsley.  The A6135 is 8th and the A61 between Wakefield and Barnsley is 10th in the report of the highest risk roads (excluding motorcycle accidents).

The European Road Assessment Programme - EuroRAP AISBL - is an international not-for profit association (Associations internationales sans but lucratif) registered in Belgium. Its members are motoring organisations, national and regional road authorities, and experts who have been elected because of the special contribution they have made to EuroRAP.

EuroRAP is a sister programme to EuroNCAP, the independent crash test programme that star rates new cars for the crash protection they provide to passengers and pedestrians. EuroNCAP demonstrates that well-designed crash protection can make family cars safer. Similarly, EuroRAP is beginning to show how roads can be made safer, so that the car and road work together to protect life.

The full report can be found here 17Mb PDF file

EuroRAP website contains more details

EURORAP 2009:  GB TRACKING SURVEY RESULTS

• Major new analysis covering all Britain’s motorways and A-roads
• 60% of A-roads fail to rate as safe
• Analysis covers roads where deaths are concentrated: 50% of the deaths on just 10% of Britain’s network length
• Foundation to make progress on eliminating risky roads ‘transparent’
• Eight out of 10 highest risk sections in North England
• Safer road design is already saving lives

Single-carriageway A-roads are rated Britain’s most dangerous and 58 per cent of A-roads and 25 per cent of motorways fail to rate as safe, according to the latest survey by the Road Safety Foundation, which has tracked and classified the risk-level of roads for the last nine years.

For the first time, the Road Safety Foundation’s annual study takes account of 45,000km of the country’s motorways and A-roads. Previous analysis covered 22,000km of motorways and primary routes.

Dr Joanne Hill, Director of the Road Safety Foundation, which carried out the research, says: “Overwhelmingly, the UK’s highest-risk roads are single-carriageways, and eight out of ten of the ‘persistently higher risk’ roads are in the North of England, notably around Buxton, Sheffield, Macclesfield and in Yorkshire and Humberside.

“Motorways and primary A-roads are the ones drivers use to travel longer journeys, such as for holidays or for long-distance haulage; but it is the busy non-primary routes – the ones that take volumes of traffic at all hours between towns and villages across Britain – that the new survey shows represent the highest risk, accounting for 62 per cent of all road deaths.”