Road safety data1, related to personal injury accidents on public roads that are reported to the police and recorded using STATS19 show that in 2017, there were 41 fatalities, 313 serious injuries and 1,456 slight injuries resulting from incidents involving towing in Great Britain. The financial cost of these casualties2 is estimated to be around £168.4 million, highlighting the significant cost of towing incidents on the GB road network. Improving safety on our roads reduces physical, mental and emotional harm to individuals. A safer network also improves journey time reliability, contributing to economic output. There is also a significant increase in risk to safety and maintenance personnel attending and clearing incidents, emotional impact on families and reputational implications for employers whose employees are involved in incidents.
The National Towing Working Group (NTWG) is a strategic alliance set up and chaired by Highways England to deliver actions within current legislation to help prevent towing related incidents and improve the levels of awareness and compliance.
This framework has been produced to outline how Highways England and the other partners of the NTWG will address towing safety together and deliver their mission to reduce towing related incidents, both domestic and business on all roads such as breakdowns, loss of load and road traffic collisions. To work together to reduce towing related incidents, both domestic and on business, such as breakdowns, loss of load, and road traffic collisions.
1 https://data.gov.uk/dataset/cb7ae6f0-4be6-4935-9277-47e5ce24a11f/road-safety-data
2 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ras60-average-value-of-preventing-roadaccidents#
accident-and-casualty-costs-excel-data-tables