More people are killed by road accidents than by any other cause except disease. Every year, more than 3,000 people die and 258,000 are injured - 32,000 severely - on Britain's roads. The deaths are more than the number that perished in the 9/11 attack and roughly equal to the entire total of all those killed by 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. Yet neither the toll nor the vast majority of road accidents attract much attention: they are seen as an inevitable cost of the mobility that cars offer. Complacency is shaken only when an unpublished Department for Transport document reveals that Britons have a 1 in 200 chance of dying on the roads.

Three important points need to be made about this figure. The first is that the risk is far lower than it used to be. In 1965 some 7,900 people were killed on the roads when there were only 12.9 million licensed motor vehicles, a third of the number today. Poor roads and bad driving contributed to the high toll, but it was two factors especially that made driving so dangerous: alcohol and windscreen impact. To her enduring credit, Barbara Castle, Labour's Transport Minister, forced through compulsory seatbelt fitting and the first effective curb on drinking and driving in the Road Safety Act 1967, which introduced Breathalyser tests and an alcohol limit of 80mg per 100ml of blood. There was an outcry from pubs and drinkers but the law was sternly enforced. The results were extraordinary. In ten years the death toll fell from 7,952 to 6,366 despite a 35 per cent rise in car ownership. A law making drink-driving simple to detect has profoundly changed attitudes: almost no one nowadays regards it as acceptable to drink and drive.

The second point about the statistic is that Britain has one of the best road safety records in Europe. Almost three times as many people are killed per head of population in Spain as in Britain: 15 deaths per 100,000 people compared with 5.5 for Britain. The figures for new EU members are far worse, running at 19.2 in Lithuania. Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and most of Eastern Europe are also well over twice the UK rate. But the trend is alarming: Britain's position in the table is falling as other countries, such as the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden have done more to cut road accidents. In 2000 the figure for Norway was 7.6 compared with 5.9 for Britain; now it is 4.9.

Thirdly, the breakdown of figures shows a particularly unhappy statistic: in the number of child pedestrian deaths caused by accidents, Britain has one of the worst records, far higher than Belgium, France, Denmark and Spain. Northern Ireland's figure is especially bad, running at twice the English rate. Road safety must concentrate not only on those behind the wheel but also on the dangers for children playing in the streets, and on pedestrian attitudes and safety in towns. And the next generation of road safety problems involves the use of mobile phones and handheld devices.

Technology, car design, road engineering and speed cameras can do only so much. In the end, people have to grasp the dangers to their own lives before they modify their behaviour. The Department for Transport's statistic is a reminder, above all, that cars have brought freedom, convenience and, for people behind the wheel and on foot, added individual responsibility.