THE A461 is the most dangerous road in Dudley for motorcyclists, according to latest data based on crash statistics.

There have been five accidents in two years on the busy A road, including one fatal crash, according to Government data analysed by Swinton Insurance.

Stourton motorbike rider Elliott Beddow, aged just 20, tragically lost his life on the Brettell Lane stretch of the road, which runs from Amblecote all the way through Dudley, after coming off his Harley Davidson at speed near the junction of Silver Street in the early hours of September 3, 2016.

The A4101, which runs from Kingswinford to Dudley, and the A459, which runs through Dudley out towards Wolverhampton, were the other worst roads for motorcycle crashes – the data, for 2016 and 2017, shows.

There were three crashes, one serious and two slight, involving motorbikes on both the A road during those two years.

The A456 is also flagged up as dangerous for bikers, according to the data. The busy dual carriageway was the scene of two serious crashes – including a fatal accident at Manor Way on Sunday October 30, 2016, in which young motorcyclist Tom Winters died.

The A458 which runs through Wollaston, Stourbridge, Lye and to Halesowen, was also the scene of two crashes in 2016 and 17, including one serious on August 17, 2016.

Two crashes, including a serious motorcycle smash on November 16, 2016, also occurred on the B4176, which runs through Dudley to Himley, and the B4179, which runs in Brierley Hill, where a rider was hurt in a serious collision on May 13, 2016, on a Friday – the day most crashes occurred on.

According to the data study (more information on which can be found here) - 11 out of 48 recorded collisions occurred on a Friday, with just three occurring on a Saturday, and both fatal crashes involved motorbikes over 500CC.

Collisions in the West Midlands as a whole, however, appear to have fallen. There were 523 recorded crashes in 2016 with the number falling by 17 per cent to 433 in 2017.

Councillor Karen Shakespeare, Dudley Council's cabinet member for environmental, highways and street services, said: “Road safety for all our road users is of paramount importance to us and we are always working with the police to create the safest possible conditions.

“Each year we undertake a review of all of the last three years recorded incidents for the whole of the borough, this is a recognised national standard for investigating highway safety records. Wherever we find clusters of identifiable and treatable patterns of collisions we undertake work through our safety improvement programme.

“By adopting these processes we have successfully reduced the numbers of recorded injury incidents reported to the police in the borough by more than 40 per cent over the last ten years.”