Hi.

Driving along the M62 in rain and fog earlier today, I passed 3
accidents - all involving HGVs.  One had careered off the road,
landing upside down.  One had hit a 4x4, spinning it around in the
opposite direction.  The other involved 2 HGVs sandwiching some poor
woman in a saloon - who luckily was ok.

Could you tell me how many serious accidents in the UK involve HGVs
(if possible as the cause) and how many involving cars.

What I am curious about is how dangerous an HGV is per se - for every
HGV mile travelled, how likely is it to cause an accident against
every mile travelled by a car?

This is my first question to Answers, so please let me know if you
feel the price is unrealistic.

Thanks.

Hi murunbuchstansinger,

Please find below a summary of the statistics for car and HGV
accidents for 2004. As can be seen from the table below traveling by
HGV is safer than by car.

					Cars	HGVs
Fatal (Number of Vehicles)		3520	472
Rate					0.9	1.6
		
Fatal or Serious (Number of Vehicles)	34416	2142
Rate					9	7
		
All Severities	(Number of Vehicles)	291842	12516
Rate					73	43

The rate is per 100 million vehicle kilometres.


The statistics above (including many others) are available on the
following page (in either Excel or PDF format). The statistics cover
the period 1994-2004.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_control/documents/contentservertemplate/dft_index.hcst?n=14457&l=5

There is a very detailed breakdown of transport accidents in the UK on
the Department for Transport government web site.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/divisionhomepage/037791.hcsp

===============================================

Search Strategy:

Department of Transport UK
://www.google.com/search?q=department+of+transport+uk

I hope the above information answers your question. If you require any
further clarification please do not hesitate to ask.


Regards,
lotd

Great answer - thanks! It seems that you are nearly twice as likely to
die for every km travelled if in an HGV, but less likely to actually
be in an accident.

I couldn't get to those stats when I tried myself - so good job.  This
answer has piqued my interest - should I ask another question, or ask
for further research for a promised tip?  I would like to know if it
is possible to establish either cause of accident (maybe there are
some news or insurance company sites with this) or just the vehicles
involved on a per accident basis - i.e. if there were 3520 fatal
accidents last year involving cars, were HGVs also involved in some of
those accidents - like a ven diagram (or a van diagram haha!).

Thanks for the rating and tip. I think it may be more difficult to
find the information about the cause of accidents. I am sure if you
pose another question, either myself or one of the other researchers
will certainly try our best to answer it.

-lotd

Ok, thanks!