Facts

  • A car travelling at 30mph takes 23 metres to stop, from the time the driver realises they need to brake, to the time when they come to a complete stop. That’s the length of 15 average height 12 year olds, all lying down on the road.
  • North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service attends more road crashes than fires. Some of the scenes are so horrific that they scar the fire officers for life.
  • If you overtake a car at 50mph, and hit a car travelling in the other direction at 50mph, the speed of the collision is the combined speed of 100 mph – you won’t survive. 
  • Young drivers are twice as likely to die in a road crash when carrying passengers of a similar age.
  • If you are involved in a crash your airbag will inflate at a speed of between 300 and 600mph. Airbags are designed to work with seat belts. If you aren’t wearing a seat belt the airbag could kill you.
  • A cyclist is ten times more likely to be killed than a car driver per km travelled.
  • More than 16,000 cyclists are hurt or killed every year in Britain. That’s 44 casualties a day or nearly two every hour.
  • Around a quarter of cyclists who are killed or seriously injured are aged under 20.
  • It takes one hour to rid one unit of alcohol from your system. This means if you’re getting a lift off someone early in the morning they could still be over the limit from the night before. 
  • In 2008, 536 people were killed or seriously injured in North Yorkshire. 34 of these were children.