Trusted Dealers has launched the Data Drive website, that breaks down over a decade's road safety data for the UK.

The Data Drive site, accessible at http://www.trusteddealers.co.uk/road-traffic-police-reductions-study/ uses official statistics taken from between 2000 and 2013, divided into four areas related to road safety. This information is displayed as a line graph that shows the rise and fall of all four metrics over time and picks out points of interest, while more detailed information about each data set is shown below.

Although it's great news that casualties and fatalities are falling every year – 2013 marked the safest year on record – the figures revealed that offences relating to dangerous, drunk or careless driving have actually risen over the time period surveyed. Although levels are once again on a downward trend, annual convictions for dangerous driving are in fact higher now than they were in 2000.

Additionally, dangerous driving is the only type of motoring offence where convictions have increased – all the others, including speeding, neglect of traffic signs and offences that caused accidents, have gone down since the turn of the century. Taken together, the figures seem to paint the picture that a smaller police force is actively targeting the most dangerous drivers.

These trends and many others can be explored in Data Drive, and as the nation prepares to focus its attention on road safety for a week, Trusted Dealers hopes the figures will prove a useful guide to discovering what has changed over the past 14 years.

"It's always encouraging to hear that deaths and injuries on the roads are declining, but the figures don't always give a complete picture," said Neil Addley, managing director at Trusted Dealers.

"With Data Drive, we took a number of additional metrics into account – and while the roads do indeed appear to be becoming safer in terms of accidents, there is no room for complacency while we have fewer police overseeing a vastly increased number of motorists."

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