Beware ‘Black Saturday’
The most dangerous time to be on Britain’s roads this year will be this Saturday at 2pm, according to new research.
‘Black Saturday’ occurs because of a perfect storm of factors including peak traffic volumes in July, the start of the children’s school holidays and the great summer getaway all happening at the same time.
More vehicle collisions occur in the summer months of July and August – 2,330 serious and fatal collisions in July and 2,148 in August. This compares with only 1,578 in January and 1,544 in February.
Despite the fact that winter months generally bring more difficult driving conditions like icy roads and poor visibility, there are 27.5% more road incidents in the summer, 33,312 in July and August, compared with the winter 26,122.
This increase is due to the greater number of motorists on the roads, with the vast majority of families choosing to take their summer holidays at this time. Incidents rise sharply during June and July, hitting a peak at the end of July. This year, Saturday, July 22 is the predicted to be busiest day of the year on the roads.
Saturdays are the worst day for crashes during the summer anyway, when car drivers are nearly twice as likely (1.7 times) to be distracted or impaired in their driving than compared weekdays.
The busiest time on the roads will be at 2pm when the ‘great escape’ is in full flow.
This is according to Vision Track, a leading in-vehicle CCTV firm.
VisionTrack managing director Simon Marsh said, ‘We are asking motorists to take extra special care when starting out on their summer holidays. The most common cause of road collisions is not poor road conditions or your car, it’s bad driving. The summer months have the highest number of road collisions and Saturday July 22 is likely to provide the perfect storm for poor driving conditions.
‘It will be first day of the summer holidays for many families and there will be extremely large numbers of motorists taking to the roads. Cars will be packed full of children and luggage, which means that drivers will be more stressed and distracted than usual, as they make their way to airports and holiday destinations.
‘As a result this day is expected to have the highest number of incidents for the whole of the year.’
