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Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough, it isn't fit for humans now, so wrote former Poet Laureate John Betjeman in 1937, and, although he later said he regretted his criticism of the urban area in Berkshire, it has now emerged as the most likely place in the UK to have an road traffic accident.
With an accident rate 41.3% above the national average, the town has gained the dubious title for the third successive year and, what's even more ironic, is that in the 1950s Slough set up a number of road safety schemes including a linked series of traffic lights which were timed to stay green if drivers kepr to the 30mph speed limit.
Slough, which is west of London not far from Heathrow airport, is close to the busy through routes of the M4 and M40 motorways and the A4 trunk road while its industrial estates attract heavy lorries delivering goods but there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason for its dubious pride of place as riskiest place for a car accident.
The survey, conducted by an insurance company, placed Bradford and Birmingham in second and third places, a rather less surprising figure than Slough's, considering the amount of traffic in those areas.
Other towns with higher than average vehicle accident statistics were, unsurprisingly, London, Wolverhampton, Oldham, Brighton, Manchester, Sheffield and Milton.
At the opposite end of the scale, it might have been expected that the places where there was least risk of being involved in a car accident would be rural areas, however, top of safety league was the chief city of Northern Ireland, Belfast, with a reported incident rate 44.9% below average.
Safest towns to avoid a road traffic accident
If you want to avoid being in a car crash, it seems the best towns to drive in between 2005 and 2008 after Belfast were Bangor, Swansea, Aberdeen, Ipswich, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Norwich and Cheltenham.
This is the second time Belfast has won the safety-first accolade and, although you might expect the weather to play an important part in the accident rate in Scotland, drivers in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow all seem to take extra care.
The results were collected by analysing motor claims over the last three years from Endsleigh policyholders in the UK and ranked the towns and cities by comparing the frequency of accident claims rather than simply looking at the total number of incidents.
Another factor to emerge from the report is that students aged 16 to 24 appear to be safer drivers than non-student drivers of the same age group as illustrated by their figure of claims being 27% fewer.
The survey does not differentiate between road traffic accidents resulting in personal injury and compensation claims and those which only caused damage to the vehicles.
