Cat and Fiddle named as most dangerous road

The country’s most dangerous road has been named for the second year running as the A537 ‘Cat and Fiddle’ from Macclesfield in Cheshire to Buxton, Derbyshire.

Police records show most of the casualties were motorcyclists, not local, and male with an average age of 35, according to a study.

Fatal and serious collisions on the road rose by 127% in three years, from 15 to 34, with most crashes at weekends during the summer in dry, daylight conditions.

MCN recently revealed a £900,000 network of new bike-catching average-speed cameras on the route was useless due to an apparent oversight. The cameras are supposed to time vehicles between one unit and the next and calculate their speed by assuming they’ve stayed on the same road.  

But between two of them there is a shortcut which leaves and rejoins the A537, cutting the journey and making the calculation impossible. The project has been delayed for three months and camera bosses still can’t say when enforcement will begin.

The study by the Road Safety Foundation also found half of all fatal collisions occur on one-tenth of Britain’s road network.