A seven-mile stretch of road in Sussex has been identified as among the most dangerous for motorcyclists in Britain.

The A283, linking Shoreham with the A24, was the scene of 11 major motorbike crashes, one of them fatal, between 2000 and 2003, according to a survey by the AA Motoring Trust.

The report rated the stretch among the 13 riskiest roads in the country.

The trust also named 149 roads, including 39 in London, the Thames Valley and the South-East, where at least one in three of the fatal and serious accidents involved motorcycles.

In total, 856 inter-urban roads which make up the UK's primary route network were examined.

The report said motorcyclists were 30 times more likely to be killed than car drivers and made up one in six of all road deaths, despite covering only one per cent of all miles travelled.

Of the 3,431 people killed on the roads in 2002, 609 were on motorcycles, scooters or mopeds.

The report said many bikers fell victim to roads they had chosen to ride on because they were challenging routes.

But the study, by the AA Trust-led European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP), which rates roads for the risk they represent to users, showed many were innocent victims of unforgiving road design, poor road maintenance or the failure of car drivers to "think bike".

Four out of ten motorcylcists were killed at junctions, most in collisions with cars, and previous studies showed that in more than half those cases the car driver was at fault.

Another four in ten were killed on bends, none of which were protected with biker-friendly crash barriers of a type now being installed in France and Germany.

About 60 per cent of motorcycle deaths happened on roads outside built-up areas, mostly on larger-engined machines.

The peak age group for motorcycle deaths was 30 to 34 but the biggest increase in deaths between 1997 and 2002 was in the 30 to 49 age group.

John Dawson, EuroRAP chairman and director of the AA Motoring Trust, said: "No engineering measures will protect the lunatic fringe who treat every winding road as a potential racetrack and the only way to deal with them is a high level of enforcement.

"But the actions of this minority should not blind engineers to the measures they could take to improve roads for the benefit of the sensible majority.

"Bikers are very vulnerable and they are grossly over-represented in UK casualty figures.

"Road engineers have a duty to examine the type of accidents which motorcyclists are having on certain roads, and they should be protected as much as possible, with better junction design, better road surfaces and improved crash barriers.

"Car drivers need to be constantly reminded to remember to look for motorbikes. On many roads, engineers need to concentrate their resources to reduce the overall accident rate. While some are working hard to do this, in other places we worry that not everything that could be done is being done."