New research pinpoints UK's most dangerous roads

Ten miles of road in Lincolnshire has been named the most persistently dangerous stretch out of all the roads in the UK, researchers say.

The Road Safety Foundation calculated that the A18 between Laceby and Ludborough as the most persistently dangerous road in Britain.

The number of fatal and serious crashes on the narrow rural road in Lincolnshire increased by 70%. There were 10 incidents in 2008-10 and 17 in 2011-13.

Some 41% of accidents in the latter period involved vehicles veering off the winding, tree-lined road.

The section topped a list of high risk and medium-high risk roads which have shown little or no change in accident levels or which have had significant increases in the number of crashes.

The next most persistently risky road is a four-mile stretch of the A36 in Totton, Hampshire, followed by an 18-mile section of the A588 between Blackpool and Lancaster.

Other major blackspots include the A44 between Llangurig and Aberystwyth, in Mid Wales, and the A532 in Crewe.

The research also found that cashes on England's major highways cost £2.1 billion over a three-year period.

The RSF concluded that reducing crashes on the strategic road network was "a moral and an economic imperative" for Highways England.

The cost of crashes on England's 4,300-mile motorway and major A road network between 2011 and 2013 was calculated by the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) based on a number of factors such as the response from the emergency services, insurance claims and loss of output due to injury.