IF YOU spotted a police patrol on your way home from work on Friday, you weren't alone.

North Yorkshire Police officers had hit the highways as part of a high-profile safety blitz aimed at cutting the number of serious accidents on the region's roads.

From midnight to midnight, 31 road traffic accidents were reported to the force's control room. Eleven of those involved injuries.

Over the same period last week, police dealt with 33 road accidents.

The casualty-free day was held on a Friday, statistically the day with the worst accident rate. Inspector Steve Burns said: "More vehicles travel on roads on Mondays and Fridays, so the laws of probability say we will get more accidents.

"We are targeting our road policing resources in the places where our intelligence tells us the accidents are occurring.

"This campaign is all about being seen.

"If we park at a road junction with a high accident rate in time to catch the afternoon rush hour, there is every likelihood that people will behave themselves and we will achieve our objective."

Speaking about "no accident" days, David Lindsay, pictured, North Yorkshire County Council's road safety officer, said they were proving a success.

He said: "The police and the county council are in total agreement on the positive effect of road traffic enforcement.

"There is a lot of poor driving out there and that quite often leads to people being killed or injured.

"We want people to take responsibility for their driving."

Firefighters cut open a car to free its injured driver in what police described as the most serious of yesterday's road accidents.

A Fiat and a Skoda car were involved in a collision just after 4pm in Chestnut Avenue, Welburn, near Malton.

An ambulance and helicopter were sent to the scene.

A fire service spokesman said the driver of the Fiat, a man in his 50s, was placed on a spine board and taken to York Hospital suffering from serious back injuries.

The driver of the Skoda was not seriously injured.

Updated: 10:06 Saturday, August 20, 2005