Britain's most dangerous roads revealed

Analysis of over 2,000 British motorways and A-roads has found that the A38 has seen the most accidents, while more road users have lost their lives on the A1 than anywhere else in the country.

The data was obtained by insurance broker Carole Nash following a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Transport, which looked at all reported road incidents on UK roads between 2007 and 2016.

On the M1, which passes through Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, there have been a total of 7,167 accidents involving 13,121 vehicles with 154 deaths.

The A537, which runs from Buxton to Macclesfield and on to Knutsford, has seen 405 accidents involving 496 vehicles with eight deaths.

On the A38, which runs from Mansfield to Bodmin in Cornwall, there were 8,698 accident involving 13,153 vehicles with 137 deaths.

And on the A610, which runs from Ambergate to Nottingham, there were 1,026 accidents involving 1,458 vehicles with three deaths.

The A6, which runs from Bedfordshire to Cumbria, via Derbyshire, saw 8,338 accidents involving 11,938 vehicles with 152 deaths.

The M25 was the most accident-prone motorway with 7,673 individual cases, but more vehicles were involved in crashes on the M1.

The M6 though has claimed the most lives of any motorway. 160 deaths were reported on the highway which covers large parts of the Midlands and North West of England. This is despite racking up 331 fewer accidents than the M25 and 275 fewer than the M1.

However, it’s not an entirely negative picture with the findings revealing that the number of reported accidents has largely decreased year-on-year, with 25% fewer crashes registered on major roads in 2016 than 2007.

In addition, no one had died in an accident on 35% of the roads analysed, including eight of the 51 motorways.

The safest motorway was found to be the M49. Covering the Bristol and Gloucestershire area, the road has seen just 11 accidents over the 10-year period, none of which resulted in a death.

Carole Nash have also launched a road safety hub on their website, which it hopes will give road users the guidance they need to keep safe on Britain’s roads.

Rebecca Donohue, Head of Marketing at Carole Nash, said: “Safety is naturally paramount to every road user, so we hope this data and the road safety hub on our website will help provide our customers with as much information as possible to keep them safe.

“It is very positive though to note that the number of accidents is steadily decreasing year-on-year, which is testament to road users and those who enforce the safety precautions on our highways.”

To see the data in full, click here.