The commitment, innovation and clear achievement in reducing deaths and serious injuries on the UK's road network by the Road Safety Foundation received formal recognition today.

The Foundation was presented with a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award in recognition of its important role in establishing a respected, systematic method of assessing roads and constructively helping road authorities to make their roads safe.

Britain's finances may be exhausted but savings in the cost of road crashes costing 1.5% of GDP and worth £18bn annually are readily achievable. The high costs of emergency services, hospitals and long term care for the disabled can often be avoided through little more than the cost of a pot of paint, according to the annual road tracking survey carried out by the Road Safety Foundation - the largest analysis of its type anywhere in the world, covering 28,000 miles. The Saving Lives for Less report, which shows where the high risk roads on which road trauma and high costs are concentrated, will be unveiled today.

Less than a third of Europe's major trading road routes meet the best possible safety standard to which EU nations have committed themselves on the network, according to an online digital report published today by EuroRAP. 

The report for the first time provides comprehensive analysis of the safety of Europes TEN-T road network and highlights wide regional variations in safety standards and investment. Overall, the trans-European road network accounts for around 20,000 deaths and serious injuries each year, which EuroRAP estimates costs EU economies EUR10bn annually, excluding the cost of resulting traffic delays.

EU motorists planning their annual touring trip to France are warned that, while they can expect the highest safety engineering standards in Europe on the autoroutes, the safety of other popular French touring roads is far lower. British motorists face risk levels in France last seen on roads at home 15 years ago, according to a report launched today, commissioned by a consortium of European touring clubs and safety charities.

How safe are you on French roads? reports on an inspection of 4,300km of popular tourist roads in France. The inspection and assessment was undertaken in line with the safety rating being adopted worldwide and pioneered by the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP). The star rating assesses the risk of the most common causes of death on the road - collisions at junctions, running off the road, or hitting oncoming traffic.

Two-thirds of England's 1,600 km of single carriageway trunk roads win only a 2-star rating according to a report by the Road Safety Foundation which has inspected 95 per cent of the 7,000 km Highways Agency (HA) network in England. The network has been safety rated to an international Star Rating system being applied worldwide as part of a new approach by leading authorities to make road infrastructure safer.

The European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP) Road Protection Score is a scale for rating roads on how well the design protects users from death or disabling injury when a crash occurs. Its sister programme, EuroNCAP, similarly measures the crash protection provided by new cars.