Scotland has a greater proportion of dangerous roads than the UK as a whole, a report published today by a road safety group has found.

Scotland has a greater proportion of dangerous roads than the UK as a whole, a report published today by a road safety group has found.

Around one in six roads in the network of motorways and A roads surveyed by the Road Safety Foundation were found to present a medium or high risk of death or serious injury in Scotland. This compared with a UK average of one in eight, it said.

Rural roads and smaller, "non-primary" A roads had the highest concentration of dangerous routes, while motorways and trunk roads - the responsibility of government agency Transport Scotland - were generally found to be safe.

The findings, based on the number of crashes that result in fatalities or serious injuries measured against volume of traffic, prompted calls for greater levels of investment in non-trunk roads to improve their safety profile.

It follows the Scottish Government's announcement of an ambitious target to cut road deaths by 40% by 2020 and the revelation in The Herald last week that councils face a maintenance backlog of up to £2bn to fix the roads under their control.

Joanne Hill, managing executive of Road Safety Foundation, said: "Scotland certainly has more roads in the medium-to-high risk category than the UK as a whole but, because they carry smaller volumes of traffic, it is harder to make the economic case for investing in them."

Among trunk roads in Scotland, only the A86 in the Highlands was found to present a high risk.

However, the findings also prompted renewed calls for improvements to the A82 in the west of Scotland, the longest stretch of trunk road in Scotland to present a medium-to-high risk of death or serious injury.

A spokeswoman for Transport Scotland defended its investment in Scotland's trunk roads, including £16m already committed to improving the A82.