Norfolk records largest rise in road casualties

Last year more than four in 10 drivers in Norfolk involved in a crash said they were distracted beforehand

Road casualties in Norfolk have risen by more than anywhere else in the country, according to a road safety charity.

Brake analysed the latest Department for Transport (DfT) annual data and found the number of people killed or seriously injured in Norfolk rose from 470 in 2023 to 555 last year.

This compared with a slight decrease across the the East of England as a whole, where 2,725 people were killed or seriously injured on roads in 2024 – down 1.9% on 2023, the charity said.

As part of its Road Safety Week campaign, Brake is calling for life-saving technology, such as speed assistance and driver attention warnings, to be mandated for all new vehicles in the UK.

The charity has been assessing the 2024 figures released by the DfT in September. It said speed was a factor in 59% of all road deaths during the year, and it believed the technology could prevent some 1,700 deaths.

Iain Temperton, a road safety consultant with Traject and former head of road safety at Norfolk County Council, said: "If they're used properly, they are fabulous tools to help us manage our speed and keep ourselves and other people safe."

But he said we should not rely on technology to tell us what the speed limit is.

"As drivers, we all have the responsibility to know what the speed limit is we're driving to. So we need to be aware of the rules [and] know how to identify a speed limit on a particular road," he said.

"Once we know that, we can use the technology to help us stick to that speed limit."

Chris Spinks, former head of roads policing in Norfolk and Suffolk, said car manufacturers had spent "millions of pounds trialling [technology], making sure that they are safe".

He added: "It's like anything you have in a vehicle – it's got to be used properly."

Mr Spinks said there was often opposition to change.

"If you go back all the way to when seatbelts were first brought in, there was a groundswell of opinion that said, 'Oh, if my car catches fire, I'm going to be stuck'.

"Well, actually, the amount of times that a seatbelt would save serious injury or life massively outweighs any of those issues in relation to being trapped."