By far the most common contributing factor in road traffic accidents on UK roads each year is 'failing to look properly'. That's the finding of the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), after making a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Transport relating to data from 2013.

When a police officer records an accident, they can document six contributory factors out of a possible 77. IAM went through the data and found the top 20 pairs of factors that contributed most to accidents.

'Failure to look properly' appeared most frequently in the pairs, factoring in more than 30,000 accidents. The next most common factor was ‘failure to judge another person's path or speed’. Combined, these two factors were responsible for 13,299 accidents – accounting for some seven per cent of all accidents.

Five per cent of the total, or 9,132 accidents, were due to a combination of ‘failure to look properly’ and either ‘carelessness or recklessness’ or ‘judged to be in a hurry’.

Two per cent of all accidents (4,339) were caused by a ‘failure to judge another driver’s path or speed’, combined with either ‘carelessness or recklessness’, or ‘judged to be in a hurry’.

The seventh most common cause was ’slippery roads due to weather conditions’ combined with ‘loss of vehicle control’ – which led to more than 3,000 accidents.

The Institute of Advanced Motorists has created a spreadsheet of the most common causes of traffic accidents, which can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/1GLZEji

Road safety has been in the headlines recently, after Department for Transport data revealed that overall road casualties in the UK increased for the first time in 18 years.

There were 1,775 reported road deaths in 2014, a four per cent rise on 2013.