The A34 is , becasue of the amount of traffic carried a perfectly safe road in terms of the number of people killed per mile per number of vehicle journeys taken.
It is not a 'killer road' and does not feature in any of the most dangerous roads in the UK type professional surveys - though the pile-up do tend to be spectacular, the resulting hold up very lengthy and as a result it is nationally "newsworthy".
The road nearby which IS dangerous as it carries far less traffic but has a very high accident rate for its traffic rate is the Wantage to Hungerford A338.