News / Reviews - Read Daily News and First Impressions for the latest model launches and concept car previews. Road Tests put you in the driving seat with in-depth analysis of the new cars that count while She Drives offers a woman's view from behind the wheel. We've lots more too - Photo Galleries, Features, Running Reports, User Reviews, Motormouth and a Newsletter to keep you up to speed.

The provisional figures for casualties on our roads last year have just come out, and once again there’s no cause for celebration. Or is there? It seems that provisionally, just two per cent fewer people were killed on our roads last year than in 2005 – about 3150.

While over 3000 people dying is hardly good news, let’s put that figure into context. There are around 60million of us in the UK, and on any single day most of us move about in some way – whether it’s as pedestrians, cyclists or drivers. There are hundreds of millions of movements every day, yet fewer than nine people die each day during the process.

In terms of the potential versus actual risk, that’s a phenomenal achievement, yet the prophets of doom who run this country want ever tougher measures to reduce the toll further. While being complacent isn’t an option, neither should the continuation of a set of policies which have so far been an abysmal failure. Quite simply, the government’s road safety policies of the past decade have failed to save lives to any great degree – if at all.

The biggest culprits are the self-styled road safety groups, such as Brake and the Slower Speeds Initiative, which have demanded ever more draconian speed limits and ever greater enforcement of them. There are a million drivers on the brink of a ban thanks to these groups’ wishes being implemented, but all their policies have done is destroy lives through lost licences and the consequent loss of employment.

In the wake of the new figures being released, Brake is (as usual) calling for more of the same. Instead of accepting that the medicine isn’t working, it demands an even stronger dose. Such a situation would be laughable, if it wasn’t a matter of life and death.