It is natural that the Duke of Edinburgh’s age – 97 – has been the focus of attention alongside other details of this week’s collision in Norfolk, when a Land Rover he was driving turned over after hitting a car carrying a baby and two women, one of whom was treated for a broken wrist. Most 97-year-olds, more than three-quarters of whom are women, do not drive, so Prince Philip is unusual. Since the senses of sight and hearing decline as we age, and reactions get slower, it is reasonable to wonder – as the duke’s family surely will, whatever the outcome of the police’s investigation – if now might be a good time to hang up the driving gloves.

There have been fatal crashes in which age-related conditions were a factor. The charity Brake has called for older drivers to take annual eye tests, while the parents of Poppy-Arabella Clarke, who was three when she was killed by a pensioner who had been told to stop driving, want doctors to report people unfit to drive to the DVLA. A campaign following another fatal crash led to police being given more power to revoke licences. But while such cases exist, the evidence does not support the idea that older drivers are in general more dangerous than other drivers. On the contrary, young male drivers were found by one study to be four times as likely to crash as the over-70s (5.3 million of whom hold licences).

The more useful lesson to be drawn from this week’s events – apart from the reminder it provides of the lifesaving power of seatbelts and baby harnesses – is that roads remain dangerous places, where a momentary lapse of attention or error of judgment can have terrible consequences. After decades of steady improvements in road safety, during which deaths in the UK were reduced from 7,985 a year in 1966 to 1,857 in 2010, progress has stalled if not stopped in the last few years. The first increase in fatalities for a decade was seen in 2011, and the most recent figures show another increase in deaths, although this was offset by a decrease in injuries. Vulnerable pedestrians, a category that includes older people and children, are among the groups who have fared particularly poorly, when compared with other groups including motorists, who have benefited from new vehicle safety measures.

There is no single reason behind this change. As well as cuts to policing and justice budgets there are behavioural factors such as the use of mobile phones by drivers. Meanwhile, important initiatives, including a long-discussed government review of road traffic offences, and another review by the Sentencing Council, have got stuck in the pipeline. That this has happened while a separate piece of research exclusively concerned with law-breaking cyclists was rushed through last year, following the high-profile trial of Charlie Alliston, reflects poorly on the government. Policymakers, it appears, were more concerned to score political points than to grasp the big issues.

Recent remarks from the prisons minister, Rory Stewart, about ending short sentences makes the issue more urgent. If law-breaking drivers are not to be jailed, alternatives must be developed. The increased use of driving bans is one strong option. Data collection must also be improved. Currently, roads policing is not properly inspected, while many injuries are not reported. The subject is not glamorous. But it only takes one encounter with a family bereaved in traumatic circumstances to remind any of us how much it matters.