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.