'No evidence' - West Sussex County Council issues firm response after startling figures revealed for road accidents

A new study by Moneybarn analysed the number of road accidents, per local authority, to unveil the areas with the highest number of road accidents in 2022.

The UK's most accident-prone region was Kent, with 3,457 road accidents reported.

Surrey had the second most dangerous roads in the UK, with a total of 2,783 accidents taking place.

West Sussex had the UK’s seventh most accident-prone roads – with 1,826 reported accidents.

A West Sussex County Council spokesperson said: “We are disappointed to hear that West Sussex has been ranked seventh in the UK’s most accident-prone roads in this study, using road traffic collision data from 2022.

“Not all roads in West Sussex are maintained by West Sussex County Council and of the collisions in 2022, 1624 occurred on county council-maintained roads.

“Road users’ safety is of the upmost importance to us and we are continually working hard to keep our roads safe.”

The county council said it is ‘continually developing and delivering road safety interventions’, that address ‘higher risk sites’, to ‘reduce the number of casualties’.

This is done through the Local Safety Scheme (LSS) and Route Safety Scheme (RSS) programmes.

“In addition, in 2023 we introduced a new Speed Limit Policy that allows for lower speed limits to be introduced where there is greater risk to vulnerable road users,” a WSCC spokesperson added.

“Road traffic collisions may occur for a number of reasons, and we have no evidence to suggest there is a link with road conditions, such as potholes.

"However, well maintained roads do contribute to road safety and more information on the proactive measures we are taking to try and tackle the ongoing problems of potholes can read about on our Better Roads page.

“We also work in partnership with Brighton and Hove City Council, East Sussex County Council, East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, National Highways, Sussex Police and West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service as part of the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership. Education, engagement, enforcement and engineering are used to reduce road casualties including driving training, safe drive, biker down and Bikeability campaigns.”