AN annual report into the safety of North Yorkshire’s roads shows a 15 per cent rise in the number of people killed in crashes.

North Yorkshire County Council’s road safety team compiled the report, which shows the statistics for 2019 monitored against the previous year.

The number of people killed in road collisions rose from 32 in 2018 to 37 in 2019.

However, the number of people seriously injured saw a nine per cent reduction from 329 to 298.

In addition, the number of people injured in road collisions in 2019 was also down to 1,445 from 1,750 in 2018, a reduction of 17 per cent.

Continuing the overall downward trend since 2002, the number of crashes in which somebody was injured also fell by 17 per cent to 1,021 in 2019 from 1,240 in 2018.

County councillor Don Mackenzie, executive member for access, said: “Each death on the county’s roads is one too many, so it is sad to see an increase in the number of people killed in collisions and highlights the importance of all of us taking responsibility for travelling safely.

“However, it is heartening to see an overall significant reduction in the volume of collisions and the number of people injured, not least the big fall in the number of children among the casualties. We are determined to do all we can to support the continuation of this downward trend.

“We have been consulting on plans for a series of works to be financed by the Government’s Safer Roads Fund, which seeks to address issues on the 50 A-roads identified as being the most dangerous in the country.

“Our officers have already delivered a range of improvement projects on those roads in the county which qualified for investment and have been reviewing your feedback on other proposals which we are hopeful can come to fruition soon. We are confident these improvements would have a positive effect on future road collision statistics.”

The report also shows that child casualties (ages 0-15) decreased by 27 per cent from 111 in 2018 to 81 in 2019. This is 47 per cent less than the rolling five-year average of 153, and no children were killed in road collisions in 2019.

This year all schools were encouraged to take up national and local campaigns such as “be safe, be seen”, mobile phone pedestrian safety and pre-driver and passenger safety.

The 95 Alive road safety partnership, of which the county council is a founding member, works to save lives and meet casualty reduction targets by focusing campaigns on specific groups such as motorcyclists and young drivers. The county council also carries out annual and in year collision investigation and prevention work to identify high risk sites and routes which are addressed through engineering measures.

"We realise that the travel restrictions during the Covid pandemic in 2020 may have a profound effect on collision data and so we will take particular care in producing comparative reports in a year's time,” added Cllr Mackenzie.

“However, we are confident that we can continue to reduce the number of casualties in the county by working closely with our partners and all road users.”