Casualties on Oxfordshire’s roads rose slightly last year – with two incidents more than in 2008.

The Department for Transport published additions to its annual report into road deaths last week.

Figures show there were 345 people killed or seriously injured in Oxfordshire in 2009, compared to 343 the year before. This is down 37 per cent from the 1994 to 1998 average of 544 accidents.

Road safety experts rely more on killed and seriously injured statistics than just the number of fatalities because the margin of surviving a horrific crash can be exceptionally small.

Cherwell recorded the worst accident rate in the county, with 82 people killed or seriously injured on the district’s roads.

West Oxfordshire recorded just 60 accidents.

The majority of crashes happened on the county’s minor roads.

Craig McAlpine, a spokesman for Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership, said: “While there was a minor increase in the Oxfordshire figures 2008 to 2009 this is against an overall trend of reduction in collisions.

“Since 2000 there has been a 33 per cent reduction in people killed or seriously injured in road collisions in Oxfordshire.”