The world is moving one step closer to cutting the annual global road death toll of 1.2 million by recognising the crucial role of road design, according to John Dawson, chairman of the UK's Campaign for Safe Road Design.

A joint initiative from the Transport Research Centre of the influential OECD and the International Transport Forum will move the importance of road design further up the international agenda by embracing the "Safe System" approach to transport design. This new approach is being successfully used particularly in the Netherlands, Sweden and some Australian states. It ensures that, in the event of a crash, impact energies remain below the threshold likely to produce either death or serious injury.

Britain can cut its toll of road deaths and serious injuries by a third simply by investing in better road design, saving 30 lives or serious injuries a day and Britain's economy £6bn a year.

According to the Campaign for Safe Road Design, a consortium of the UK's leading road user, road safety and road design bodies, and launched at the House of Lords today a third of Britain's serious injuries or fatalities on the roads are preventable over the next 10 years with just a modest investment - primarily in signs, lines, kerbing and barriers.

A 13km section of road between Macclesfield and Buxton has been named as Britain's most dangerous road in the latest British EuroRAP results ( Getting Ahead: Returning Britain to European Leadership in Road Casualty Reduction). The single-carriageway road has been the scene of 43 fatal or serious collisions since 2001, nearly three-quarters of them involving motorcyclists.

According to Dr Joanne Hill who heads the Road Safety Foundation which carried out the research, despite Cheshire County Council's best efforts to improve the safety of the road by introducing motorcycle-friendly crash barriers, motorcyclists treating the route as a "race track" have secured its unenviable position in the league of dangerous roads.

Ireland has made progress with the building of motorways and dual carriageways, and has fixed the worst of the country's single carriageways in the last few years. But the long stretches of single carriageway roads on the network continue to be a major safety hazard and a serious challenge for the road authorities north & south.

Today (May 20, 2008) Mr Noel Dempsey TD, Minister for Transport was formally presented with the EuroRAP Ireland report 2008 - the European Road Assessment Programme report highlighting the current road infrastructure conditions across the entire island of Ireland.