IT is the start of National Road Victim Month and no one is more aware of its importance than Radcliffe man Allan Ramsay.

He fractured his skull in a horrific traffic accident ten years ago and is keen to help raise the profile of RoadPeace, the national charity promoting the month-long safer driving message.

Mr Ramsay, of Water Lane Street, suffered terrible head injuries when he was resting on his bike in a lay-by and a metal pole sticking out from the side of a passing farm vehicle struck him on the head and fractured his skull.

The accident forced him to give up work as a welder and left him with a legacy of dizziness and headaches, which persist to this day.

He said: "Although I have improved physically, psychologically I still have problems.

"I see motorists using their mobile phones while driving and doing everything but focusing on the road. They don't realise that it only takes a split second for a child to run out, but by then it will be too late."

He said that he hopes others will follow his example by not only having "How am I driving?" on the back of his vehicle, but also a sign reminding "Lives depend on it".

National Road Victim Month is now in its third year, August was chosen because the anniversaries of the deaths of Britain's first road victim in 1896 and that of Diana, Princess of Wales, both occur in the month.

In addition, during this holiday month there is an increased risk of children being injured or killed while off school and of holidaymakers being involved in road crashes.

This year the focus will be on the under-reporting and mis-recording of road casualties in the UK. Police data is the traditional source of road casualty information, but a comparative study of hospital and police figures by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has shown that the number of people injured each year is up to three times greater than officially reported.

In 1999, the UK official road death toll was 3,564 and 330,159 people were reported injured. But RoadPeace claims the true scale of road death and injury is far worse.

According to TRL hospital data, as opposed to police figures, the annual number of those injured is almost double, and serious injuries are three times higher than the reported 40,000. One reason for this is that deaths occurring more than 30 days after the crash are not reflected in official fatality statistics.

National secretary Brigitte Chaudhry said: "With at least one million people affected each year, either directly or through family and friends, the massive scale of the problem cannot be emphasised enough.

"We want to warn road users that they are far more likely to be involved in a crash than is generally known, but also that these deaths and injuries are not inevitable.

"Everyone should be involved in reducing them and in campaigning to make their prevention and better victim care a political priority."

The National Association of Air Ambulance Services (NAAAS) has urged drivers to put safety first in the light of increased road deaths in Greater Manchester.