are being asked to step in. what happens to him, then? he will get a letter. and what will that letter say? don't do it again. we investigate britain's killer roads. he should be there, and he's not there, and it's not fair. i'm going on a road trip... ..from here, at the bottom of cornwall... ..to the very top of scotland. i want to find out more about the risks we face when we get behind the wheel, and why britain's roads are getting more dangerous. the thing is, it shouldn't be like this. cars are getting safer. roads should be getting safer. but that is not what's going on. for 30 years, the fatality rate — the number of deaths per billion miles travelled — was falling. for the past decade, it stayed broadly the same. but in 2020, the death rate rose by 5% — the most significant increase in a0 years. last year, we've even seen an increase in the rate of fatalities, so it's very, very worrying. it matters because these are real people that are dying on our roads, and many of them are totally unnecessary. they're not accidents — these are deaths that could have been prevented. around 1,600 people die on our roads each year and 25,000 are seriously injured — so many families whose lives are changed for ever. rural roads are the most dangerous. this village in north cornwall had a fatal collision in 2019. then, just before christmas, a 13—year—old boy was injured as he walked to football practice. this is where the accident happened. that's where lucas was hit. lucas's leg was broken in two places. the police are investigating the accident. it was the worst pain i've ever felt by about a mile. it was so bad. all my mates were just there, just shouting, screaming for help. we could tell, just by looking at his leg, that it was broken and he was screaming out in pain, and it's awful to see your child in that much pain. do you feel that it could have been worse? yeah, ifeel it could have been a lot worse, and i got away with it, really, �*cause not many people are here to tell the tale after being hit by a car. and do you think people understand the dangers? i don't think they do, and a lot of the roads round here don't have pavements, so you are literally on the road. so anybody could be a lucas? yeah, yeah. itjust takes one accident like that and, yeah, you'll be a lucas. some of the worst incidents are being filmed. oh, my god! an army of dash cam drivers is recording them. horn beeps 0n ourjourney, we're going to show you four big problems making the roads more dangerous. the first... we've used freedom of information requests to try to get to the facts. 3a forces in england, scotland and wales responded. they had 5,014 dedicated traffic officers in 2016, but 757 officers have been lost in just five years. that's a fall of 15%. the police watchdog is worried. there are some police forces that have got negligible presence on the roads, and that's happened because, in general, it's been given a low priority. so, you've got a scenario where the fatality rate has risen for the first time in a0 years? yep. is that because there are fewer police officers out there? yeah, we think so. but by not prioritising it, the death rate�*s rising. correct. it's as simple as that. the point is that the accident rate, the long decline that we've seen, has started to turn around, and we think the only thing that really explains that is just the relative decline of roads policing. the government says it's... ..and is over halfway towards its: it says the: ..but it's: the second big danger on our roads is drivers going too fast. but what's being done to stop them? horn beeps you might think speed cameras are the answer, but we've found more than 500 aren't being used. now, nationally, more speeders are being caught than ever before, but it's patchy. freedom of information responses from 26 forces reveal almost half of their fixed speed cameras are not switched on. four forces don't have a single fixed speed camera working. the police in wiltshire have told us that here in their county, they have no fixed or mobile speed cameras, not one across the whole county. so the only way that you can get caught speeding is if a police officer decides to sit by the side of the road with his hand—held speed gun. and the force have told us that that's just down to the officer and is done on an ad hoc basis. wiltshire police says it does a huge amount of work around road safety, and it takes speeding seriously. but it only gives out around 25 speeding tickets a week, far fewer than any other force in the country. ifind that, you know, shocking and itjust is a particularly depressing example ofjust how low down the priority order roads policing is. now, i don't expect to see roads policing at the top of every... ..every crime plan as a top priority, but it's got to be a bit more than it is at the moment. we're on the m25 now, about to head north. these are some of the uk's busiest roads. 250 miles into myjourney now, i'm heading northbound on the m1. this is bedfordshire, just north of london, and the police force here have come up with a pretty radical solution for tackling speed crime without using police officers. 26. gosh. meet dave and malcolm, the maulden community speeding team. 37. and that was a black seat. they're volunteers helping the police, a kind of dad's army enforcing the 30mph limit. 36. 37. good old white van. what happens to him, then? he will get a letter. what will that letter say? don't do it again. if you are the recipient of a third letter, you will get a visit by a member of bedfordshire police. so, there are sanctions that can be applied? there are sanctions. but there's no points, there's no fines... there's no points, there's no fines. effectively, we are volunteers, we're not police officers, and we cannot issue a penalty notice or something similar. i mean, you're cheap and free, but there's no camera, there's no police officer — why do you think the police have gone for you? budgets. money. it all comes down to money. how does that make you feel? well, safety does come down to money. you've got to make do with what you're given. spending on roads policing in england and wales has fallen by about a third in six years. i'm heading up the m1 to a force that's trying to reverse that trend. northamptonshire has one of the few chief constables who used to be a traffic cop. i still go out there on patrol and stop motorists when they're behaving or driving irresponsibly. first thing they always say, "haven't you got burglars and rapists to catch?" and so on. and the reality is that the amount of death and destruction that takes place on the road and the amount of criminality that takes place across the road network is so significant that we have to give it the same priority as that. he's invested millions in road policing, including mobile speed cameras. but here, like in many parts of the country, fixed speed cameras are owned by local councils, not the police. if i went out driving in northamptonshire today and i went fast and i went fast past a fixed camera, what would be the chance of me getting caught? well, the fixed camera network for speeding across the county is not current at the moment... it's not working? it's not working. so i wouldn't get caught? no. how do you feel about that? the technology that's sat within those cameras is old, is now not fit for purpose, so we couldn't switch them on. but we need to invest and get them switched back on and that conversation we are having now. the northamptonshire councils told us the cameras were switched off ten years ago following the loss of government funding. pushing north, 350 miles since we started, danger number three — not—so—smart motorways. and as you head north on the m1, there's quite a lot of sections like this, where the hard shoulder has been removed to provide another lane and keep the traffic flowing. and that can be dangerous if you have to stop. two years ago, panorama made a programme about smart motorways. we revealed that the refuges, where you're supposed to go if you're in trouble, were too far apart... ..that the radar technology that's supposed to detect you if you break down in a live lane wasn't installed... ..and that 38 people had been killed on smart motorways in the previous five years. one of them was claire mercer's husband, jason. sometimes i look back and think, "how has it been 2.5 years?" you know? i don't understand how it's been 2.5 years. jason and another motorist were killed after they stopped following a minor accident. the overhead cameras failed to stop the traffic. so it wasjust here, was it? just behind the gantry. right. just there. i mean, look at it. when you see it like this, though, i always find it really terrifying. yeah. look at all those cars, they're are all so close together. yeah. that car can't stop before it hits that car. a car can't stop in time. and look at this. nearly a half of it is hgvs. claire now campaigns against smart motorways. we just need the hard shoulder back. you need a hard shoulder. if you can imagine being stuck in a vehicle in the second lane, with your family, your children, and they're stuck in a live lane with hgvs thundering past that can hit them any minute, and you would not stand a chance. you absolutely would not stand a chance. after our programme, the government promised to make smart motorways safer. but two years later, most refuges are still too far apart, and the radar technology is only working on a quarter of the network. this whistle—blower contacted us because he was so concerned about the safety of smart motorways. smart motorways have been given to us as a lie. we were told that they were safe. we were told the technology was working, and the technology's not working. it's not doing what it said it was going to do. this man is a traffic officer for national highways. we're protecting his identity because he fears he'd lose hisjob for speaking out. are the smart motorways that our viewers will use tomorrow, are they dangerous? yes, they are dangerous. so what should our viewers do? i believe that they should find an alternative route, stay away from the smart motorways, because it might be the time that you go on it and you break down and that big truck doesn't see you, and they drive that close together that they won't be able to see a small car down below. last week, the government paused the roll—out of new smart motorways while safety is assessed. it also promised more investment on the existing network, including an extra 150 refuges, but some campaigners say the announcement doesn't go far enough. we're 550 miles into our journey and we've crossed the pennines from yorkshire to lancashire. next up, the fourth issue making our roads more dangerous — fewer drink—driving checks. there's a clear reduction in the policing of a crime that kills 240 people a year. singing like 19—year—old university student gabriel fields. gabriel was a kind, gentle, caring young man. he loved his sister and would spend so much time with her. he was enjoying uni and he came home because of lockdown and came back to us. so, yeah. the night after the first lockdown ended, gabriel was walking on the pavement. he was hit at 60mph by a drunk driver. the driver was jailed for seven years. the driver of that car had been drinking. what did you think when you heard that? disgusted. in complete shock. it was the first day that the pubs had opened so i was a bit angry, you know. heartbroken. every part of our life had gabriel in it. it... every place we go, every meal we sit down and he should be there, every time we do something like... you know, christmas time or a birthday. you know, evenjust the simplest of things, you know, ijust... ..miss going to wake him up, and he should be there and he's not there, and it's not fair. the main way of catching drink—drivers has always been random breath tests. afternoon. how are you? please don't worry. i'm not. this is a spot check run by lancashire police. so what we've got here today is the national drink—drive campaign and we'll have them pull into a check site for a roadside breath test to take place. sadly, there are still people who will, you know, get behind the wheel when they've had one drink or ten drinks, you know. i'lljust grab a quick breath test from you, if that's all right. yeah. today nobody failed, but the problem is the police are carrying out far fewer of these tests. zero. you're safe. live to drive another day. more than 800,000 people were breathalysed in england and wales in 2009. but that number has fallen dramatically in a decade tojust over 302,000. like many forces, lancashire now doesn't have full—time traffic police. these officers do other duties as well. drink—driving is one of those where it's particularly easy to draw the line and see a reduction in the number of stops and checks and prosecutions and an uptick in the number of serious incidents that have involved drink—driving. so it's notjust the number of pure traffic cops, it's how many of them are doing it full time and are available to do those sorts of checks. and, yes, decline in drink—drive checks equals increase in drink—drive accidents. police chiefs say they are... and that new breath testing technology is... they say... and they work closely with other agencies to tackle issues. we're heading through cumbria and into scotland to what people here call the forgotten road. so we've left glasgow and we're heading north on the a82 and this is the road that will take us to the highlands. and the scenery is amazing. this is loch lomond. it's a very, very beautiful location. but this route has a dreadful statistic. it is scotland's most dangerous road. the a82 has cost dozens of lives and captures many of the dangers of driving in britain. first, there's bad driving. a lot of that has been caught on film. bleep me! thud, gasp horn blares then there's fewer traffic officers, 47 lost in scotland in five years. and there's also the state of the road itself. i took a safety expert down one notorious section. we're right by loch lomond and then on this side, it's kind of hills and cliffs. yeah, you've got very, very steep hillsides that are not forgiving at all if you come off it. you're starting on a series of bends and if you've got a heavy wagon coming the other way, it's going to cut into the middle of the road and there's a rock on the left—hand side, you've got nowhere to go. here we've got a bit of standing water. as we get into winter, that turns to ice. if you've got to brake there, you're potentially going to lose control, and then lose control straight into the side of the hill. look at this. yeah, and you've got this situation. that's really dangerous, isn't it? yeah. there's another one here, look. this is a main road, one of the main roads going north, and you can barely get through if there's a truck. you can do it slowly but you need warning that that truck is coming the other way, and often you can't see them until it's potentially too late. this guy's in our side of the road. john thinks more cash is needed for speed cameras on the a82. apart from a couple of short stretches, scotland's most dangerous road has no fixed cameras at all. why aren't they being used to save lives, do you think? bottom line is money. you can't put cameras everywhere you want them at the same time, so there has to be a degree of prioritisation and, at the moment, it would appear that the a82 is not a priority for those cameras. the scottish government says there are mobile cameras and it's reviewing safety on this vital route to the highlands and islands. the a82 picks its way past lochs and across mountains. like thousands of old routes in britain, it's an ancient road in a modern world. i'm not really enjoying the drive on the a82. this section's actually ok but there's loads of sections that are really narrow and quite intimidating, and speed just feels like a massive factor. like, i'm doing the speed limit, or below, most of the time. there's loads of cars behind me trying to get past me and then there's stuff coming the other way, big trucks, and sometimes vehicles that are clearly going too fast, and it is... ..it is quite frightening because... ..because they've only got to do a little thing wrong and we both get killed. between 2017 and 2019, there were at least 90 serious or fatal accidents on this road. on one terrible night, the whole of the cousin family were killed. gemma and rhys, their children, peyton and heidi. they...were coming home. they were coming home. gemma went to fort william to pick up rhys from work. and the rain came down really, really fast. and the next thing... ..we knew that the car ended up on the other side of the road. samantha is rhys's mum and the children's grandmother. my grand babies didn't even get to... ..get to live their lives. you know, cos they were just babies. they were just babies. who do you blame? no—one. the road. i blame the road. 0ne false move and you're done for. you really are done for. if you go on that road, you are literally taking your life in your hands. everybody knows that. everybody knows the a82 is the forgotten road and it needs to change. four people in one car died. four people from our family died on that road. that's enough. the uk government says our roads are among the safest in the world. but it's conducting a safety review with police chiefs. five people a day die on our roads, and there is growing pressure on government and the police to act now. what we need is leadership from the top. we need every chief constable to have targets to actually reduce deaths on the roads in their areas. without those targets, it will never be a priority. how will it change? without being too negative and pessimistic about it, i don't think it's likely to change in the near future. but that means more people will die. that does. we've made it. 1,000 miles on roads that have fewer traffic officers doing fewer checks. roads that are becoming, for the first time in a generation, more dangerous. this is bbc news. i'm nuala mcgovern. our top stories: new images of the russian military build—up as the us warns any incursion into ukraine will be met with a tough response. there is no doubt — let there be no doubt at all — that if putin makes this choice, russia will pay a heavy price. aid planes finally arrive in tonga after a volcanic eruption and tsunami left the country in desperate need of supplies. we'll bring you the latest. a catholic church report finds that former pope benedict failed to act over child abuse when he was archbishop of munich. he denies the claims. two prominent female activists are missing after protesting in kabulfor women's rights in work and education. and adele breaks down as she postpones her las vegas residency the day before her first show. i'm so sorry, it's been impossible.