‘Think Blue,’ the Department of Transport’s biking campaign seems to be having an effect on motorist safety as statistics for 2009 show that the amount of motorcyclists injured or killed on UK roadways has decreased by 4% even though there has been an overall increase of traffic on roadways of 2%.
The statistics also revealed that the average number of miles travelled by motorcyclists has increased at the same time that the amount of fatalities has dropped over a year on year period since the year of 2002 showing that the amount of travelled miles is not necessarily a good indicator of incidents.
During 2009, the number of injuries suffered by motorcyclists dropped to 5,350 and there were 472 less deaths then in 2008.
Industry observers attribute the drop to a new campaign that included bill board and television advertising. They also noted that the ‘BikeSafe’ scheme by the police may have helped raise the public’s level of awareness of motorcyclists on the road.
However, while there was a drop in deaths and injuries related to motorcycle crashes, there were still more than 5,000 serious injuries in the UK, which means that thousands of people were affected by a mistake on the road or a brief second when concentration was lost while driving.
Matthew Dixon from Serious Law, a firm that specializes in injury compensation, stated that motorcyclists should be glad to hear that there were less deaths on the UK’s roadways, but there are still many people affected by serious injuries and that these people will need to focus on rebuilding their lives.
The statistics also neglect to take into account the families of those injured who oftentimes faces many worries and concerns as a result.
