The UK Department for Transport (DfT) has launched a new website that allows people in the South West to compare their local highway authority’s road safety performance with other parts of the country.

The new road safety comparison site provides collision and casualty figures against population, traffic levels, road length and authority spending, and displays how local authorities have performed during the last seven years.

In addition to putting casualty figures in context, the website features a mapping facility that enables people to see the number of cyclists or children involved in collisions on a particular road.

Road Safety Minister Stephen Hammond said that the new comparison site will give local residents a more accurate picture of their council’s performance when it comes to reducing road casualties, as well as enabling councils to make more meaningful assessments of their work to improve road safety.

"The website features a mapping facility that enables people to see the number of cyclists or children involved in collisions on a particular road."

"If a council is performing particularly well then I want to see them sharing best practice with others so that they can improve and people across the South West can benefit," the minister said.

The DfT has also announced the launch of another new research portal, The Road Safety Observatory, which provides road safety professionals with access to research on a variety of relevant topics.

Partly funded by the DfT, the new portal provides a tool for professionals and practitioners, giving them access to empirical research by taking that research and summarising it into a set of plain English.

With the launch of these two websites, the DfT fulfils a commitment set out in the Strategic Framework for Road Safety to develop two new online areas that will enable the public and road safety professionals to compare local authority performance on road safety.