Red routes

Red routes are roads in North Northamptonshire that are the most dangerous.

They're designated after analysis of road collisions by a working group of experts from North Northamptonshire Highways and our Safer Road Alliance partners.

The group meets regularly and works to reduce road casualties at these locations through:

• engineering
• enforcement
• educational interventions

Designation

A road needs to meet certain criteria over the most recent 3 years to be designated a red route:

• at least 4 injury collisions
  and
• at least one person being killed or seriously injured

within a 1km stretch of road in a rural environment or over a 500 metre stretch within an urban area.

We monitor data and quickly identify areas of concern as amber routes.

Evidence

We maintain a database of all personal injury collisions that the Police are aware of on both local and trunk routes. Information is stored as far back as 1 January 2000.

We can then identify 'at risk' road users and the roads most affected by collisions - this helps us direct our activities.

The police don't routinely attend or record non-injury collisions and the Department for Transport don't need this information from us. Provided that all the conditions of the Road Traffic Act are met then there is no obligation for a motorist to report a non-injury collision to the police. Damage-only collisions are not analysed.

Red Routes

Over 175 Red Routes have been profiled and many have benefited from effective measures, meaning a significant proportion are no longer active due to reduced collision rates.

Our road network

​Major trunk roads are maintained by National Highways and several have historical red routes on them. Even though some have high levels of collisions (which result in at least one person being killed or seriously injured), they are only monitored, as we can't investigate engineering measures on this part of the network.

Last updated 12 September 2024