A new evidence-based approach for prioritising skid resistance treatments on local roads has delivered a 38% reduction in wet road collisions, according to pioneering research funded by The Road Safety Trust.

Developed by Derby City Council in partnership with XAIS-PTS and Enodamus Ltd, the LASR (Local Authority Skid Resistance) Approach is being hailed as a breakthrough in road safety asset management.

It provides councils with a practical and data-led way to identify where surface treatments will deliver the most significant safety benefits, tailored specifically to the unique characteristics of local road networks.

Resistance matters

Skid resistance refers to how well a vehicle’s tyres grip the road surface, particularly in wet conditions.

When skid resistance is poor, braking distances increase dramatically, and the risk of a collision multiplies.

On a wet road, for instance, a car travelling at 50mph can take up to twice as long to stop as it would on a dry surface.

Every year, around one in ten injury collisions in Britain occurs on wet roads where reduced grip is a factor.

Local roads, which make up over 97% of the UK’s network, often have sharper bends, tighter junctions, and more variable surfaces than motorways, making effective skid management especially important.

Until now, however, most guidance for surface treatment prioritisation has been based on research for motorways and trunk roads, which have very different designs, conditions, and traffic patterns.

Smarter targeting

The LASR Approach addresses this gap by utilising a combination of skid resistance data, traffic volumes, collision records, and road geometry to identify high-risk locations and rank them based on their potential benefit-to-cost ratio.

The project’s findings are striking:

  • Treated sites showed a 38% average drop in wet road collisions.

  • The most significant improvements were found on bends and gradients — areas where loss of control is most likely.

  • LASR outperformed conventional prioritisation methods, questioning long-standing assumptions such as the need for uniformly high skid resistance thresholds at junctions.

Kully Boden, project lead at Derby City Council, said: “The LASR approach represents a major step forward in how local authorities manage skid resistance. For too long, local roads have been governed by default policies designed for motorways. LASR provides a realistic, risk-led method that reflects the real-world conditions local authorities deal with every day.”

Research to real-world 

The LASR project was conducted in two phases.

  • Phase One (2020–21) was a desk study involving 11 councils, developing predictive models for different road types. This phase won the DfT Special Recognition Award at LCRIG Strictly Highways 2021 and was shortlisted for the Highways Awards the same year.

  • Phase Two (2022–25) expanded the research to live trials across 13 local authorities, applying surface treatments to both urban and rural sites, and monitoring collisions before and after the interventions.

The final report, submitted to The Road Safety Trust in July 2025, demonstrates how data-driven asset management can achieve measurable safety improvements while maximising limited maintenance budgets.

LASR has been shortlisted for the Best Collaborative Partnership award at the upcoming DfT Special Recognition Awards, to be presented at LCRIG Strictly Highways 2025.

Ruth Purdie OBE, chief executive of The Road Safety Trust, praised the project’s impact: “By helping local authorities target interventions where they are most needed, this project contributes directly to our vision of zero deaths and serious injuries on UK roads. LASR shows how innovative use of data can lead to real, life-saving change.”

The road ahead

With the results now published, Derby City Council and The Road Safety Trust hope other local authorities will adopt the LASR model when planning routine skid resistance surveys and maintenance programmes.

By identifying the most hazardous sites and demonstrating that targeted treatments can reduce wet road crashes by more than a third, LASR could play a pivotal role in making Britain’s local roads safer for everyone, especially during the colder, wetter months of the year.