Guidance

Reported road casualties in Great Britain: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Updated 28 September 2023

Statistics and data availability

What are the latest statistics available?

We publish provisional annual road safety statistics in the June following the year to which the data relate with final data in the following September. Currently the latest provisional data is for 2022 and latest final data for 2022 (published September 2023).

Provisional mid-year statistics, covering the year to June, are usually published in November. Figures for the year to June 2022 are expected to be published in November 2023.

Drink-drive statistics follow a different timescale due to the time required to obtain data from coroners. Currently the most recent final data are for 2021 (published July 2023).

Why don’t you make more recent figures available?

Road safety statistics are reported on a calendar year basis. The latest annual published statistics are for 2022. Final data on reported personal injury road accidents in Great Britain for 2023 will be published in 2024.

There is a clear public interest in road accident data and statistics being put into the public domain. This allows people to make informed decisions on road safety issues based on the up-to-date accident data. However, it is also important that official statistics are released in compliance with the relevant legislation (the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007) and in an orderly manner that promotes public confidence in their objectivity and integrity. The release of pre-announced official statistics is fully consistent with the legislation and promotes objectivity and integrity by making the figures available to all users in the same format at the same time.

The selective release of figures to requesters, in advance and based on incomplete and unchecked data, would undermine these principles. Furthermore, there is a substantial body of data for earlier years that has already been made publicly available and that provides a sound basis for many decisions on road safety matters.

How can I get the underlying figures or data?

There are a range of options for accessing road safety data:

• we publish around 100 data tables include specific tabulations of the data - our table index lists everything that is available
• our data download tool provides access to accident and casualty data
• road safety data with details on each accident reported (except sensitive variables) is also made available in an open dataset

This include accidents coordinates, accident severity, and vehicles/casualties involved in each accident, along with other information including a variable lookup.

If you are interested in sensitive data (at the individual accident level, sensitive variables include contributory factors and casualty postcode), you can request this via email to the road safety statistics team. In this case, we will require an application form to be completed setting out the reasons the data are required and how confidentiality of sensitive variables will be maintained.

Where can I find figures for particular areas?

With regards to the number of traffic incidents in a particular area, each road accident published as part of STATS19 is plotted onto a user-friendly map on the THINK! Website or Crash Map website. These maps can be used to search for accidents at your location(s) of interest. Other websites are available, for example Collision Plot.

Alternatively, for defined geographies (such as local authorities or police force areas) data may be available in our data tables or download tool. The road safety open data includes the location of each accident reported which allows incidents to be counted based on their location.

What about vehicle make and model?

Details of the make and model of vehicles involved in accidents is not included in the published statistics. An application for this data would need to be made as outlined above.

Where else can I find statistics and research relating to road safety?

The Road Safety Observatory is a publicly available depository of all road safety research.

What if I can’t find what I’m looking for?

If, after reading these questions and our publications, you are unable to find what you are looking for, you can email the road safety statistics team.

For media enquiries, please contact the department’s newsdesk on 020 7944 3021 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 7pm).

Topic coverage

Coverage of the DfT road safety statistics

Data on personal injury road accidents is collected via the STATS19 system of accidents reported by the police. These statistics include data collected through the STATS19 system.

What is the definition of an accident included in these statistics?

Within our dataset accidents refer to personal-injury accidents, on public roads (including footways) which become known to the police within 30 days. In particular damage-only accidents, with no human casualties or accidents, on private roads or car parks are not included.

What variables are available in the STATS19 data?

More information on what is included in Stats19 is available.

What information is available about the cause of accidents?

Contributory factors (CFs for short) provide some insight into why and how road accidents occur. They are designed to give the key actions and failures that led directly to the actual impact to aid investigation of how accidents might be prevented. When police officers attend the scene of an accident, they are able to select up to six factors they believe contributed to the accident (for vehicles and casualties involved). Please note that this does not assign blame for the accident to any specific road user, but gives an indication of which factors the attending officer thought contributed to the accident.

Officers do not need to carry out a full investigation of the incident before allocating CFs, they usually use professional judgement about what they can see at the scene. Some CFs, such as exceeding the speed limit, may not be obvious to the officer and are therefore likely to be underreported.

Please note that not all accidents are included in the contributory factor data. Only accidents where the police attended the scene and reported at least one contributory factor are included. A total of 67% of accidents reported to the police in 2022 met these criteria.

Topics not fully covered in these statistics

Animals

The department does not collect information on pets or other animals injured in car accidents. Accidents to be reported are those involving human death or personal injury occurring on the public highway and notified to the police within 30 days of occurrence, and in which one or more vehicles are involved.

Damage only collisions

These statistics are based on personal injury accidents, for example, those where at least one person involved was injured. No statistics are available on damage only collisions.

Driver licence status

The department does not collect any information on the license status of drivers involved in reported personal injury road accidents. No information is collected on nationality of driver, whether a licence is held or what level of licence.

e-scooters

The published statistics do not yet identify e-scooters in the same way as other vehicle types. Although e-scooters are not currently one of the designated vehicle types in STATS19, guidance has been issued to police forces to identify them using the free text field for other vehicles.

For 2022 data, we have published data on e-scooters as a separate factsheet alongside the annual reported road casualties Great Britain statistics publication in September 2023.

In future, the STATS19 data collection system will be amended so that e-scooters (and similar) can be identified as a vehicle type – details are given in the recent STATS19 review report.

Foreign vehicles and drivers

The department does not hold information on the nationality of drivers involved in road accidents. STATS19 records whether the vehicles involved in a collision were left hand drive (LHD) vehicles. However, caution should be taken using this variable for analysis other than what it was intended for, that is to identify LHD vehicles. A large proportion of foreign vehicles driving on British roads are from the Republic of Ireland where they also drive on the left.

British and Irish vehicles can be driven by foreign drivers, and it is also possible that that some foreign vehicles are also driven by British drivers. Some vehicles registered in Britain are only available in LHD, such as mobile cranes, refuse vehicles, road sweepers and other vehicles of this nature. As a result, LHD cannot be used as a proxy for foreign vehicles or drivers.

Published table RAS0505 provides a breakdown of LHD vehicles involved in personal injury reported road accidents by vehicle type.

Road names and numbers

We are only able to aggregate statistics up to individual roads where the road has a unique number. This restricts the information to motorways, A roads and B roads. All other roads are referred to by name. Names can be replicated on different roads around the country, and it is not practicable to aggregate statistics for named roads.

Smart motorways

The department does not hold information on smart motorways. The requested information is held by National Highways, who can be contacted by email.

Occupation

The department does not hold information on the occupation of casualties therefore we do not know how many reported road casualties were, for example, police officers or doctors. Road maintenance workers is the only occupation that can be derived from STATS19 data.

Related statistics available elsewhere

Where can I find data on motoring offences and convictions?

The Department for Transport does not hold data on motoring offences or convictions, for example related to speeding or drink-driving.

For details on vehicle offences dealt with by the courts see Ministry of Justice statistical bulletin, Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly and associated motoring data tool. Further information is available from the Ministry of Justice.

For details on fixed penalty notices and written warnings see Home Office statistical bulletin, Police Powers and Procedures England and Wales year ending 31 March. Further information is available from the Home Office.

Please direct any further enquiry on speed limit offences to the Ministry of Justice and enquiries on fixed penalty notices and written warnings to the Home Office.

Do you have statistics about driver licence points?

DVLA holds information regarding licence points, for example to offence code CU80 - ‘Breach of requirements as to control of the vehicle’. For information regarding the number of licence points, please contact DVLA.

What about hospital admissions for road casualties?

Data on hospital admissions are collected by NHS digital.

Some analysis of hospital data for road casualties is included in our annual road safety publications with figures included in published table RAS4001.

What about figures for other countries, for example, Northern Ireland?

The data we hold only covers reported personal injury road accidents in Great Britain, we do not have data for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland statistics are published separately by the Police Service for Northern Ireland.

About the statistics

Quality and methodology of the statistics

How reliable are these statistics?

The STATS19 data are therefore not a complete record of all injury accidents and this should be borne in mind when using and analysing the data. However, they remain the most detailed, complete and reliable single source of information on road casualties covering the whole of Great Britain, in particular for monitoring trends over time.

For further details of the STATS19 data collection system please see the background information and quality and methodology sections.

How does the police road accidents data compare with other sources, such as hospital admissions?

Comparisons with death registration statistics show that very few, if any, road accident fatalities are not reported to the police. However, it has long been known that a considerable proportion of non-fatal casualties are not known to the police, as hospital, survey and compensation claims data all indicate a higher number of casualties than are reported to the police. For further details, please refer to our document comparing the different sources of casualty statistics.

What is the severity adjustment and why is it needed?

Severity adjustments have been produced to account for changes in severity reporting systems used by the police to record casualty severity. These adjustments mean that figures can be compared across time, and avoids a break in the time-series. Detailed guidance on the background to and use of the adjustments is available.

Fatalities have not been adjusted as the definition of fatal has not changed between reporting systems. Only slight and serious injuries have been adjusted due to changes in the way slight and serious injuries are recorded in an injury-based severity reporting system.

Why do the adjustments lead to an increase in serious injuries?

The severity adjustments are adjusted as if all police forces were using injury-based reporting systems (IBRS), to allow for comparison of trends over time and between forces that use different reporting systems. It is likely that IBRS leads to more accurate severity classifications. IBRS classifies casualty severity based on the injury reported by the police, previous systems involved police forces assessing the severity of the casualty themselves.

Where can I find details of the methodology used to produce the statistics?

Please see our quality and methodology section for details of how the statistics are compiled.

Development of the statistics

What work is planned to improve the statistics?

As with any collection system, STATS19 needs to be periodically reviewed to keep up with changes in technology, to make improvements to completeness and accuracy, and to reduce the reporting burden. The latest review was carried out during 2019, with the review recommendations now published.

How can I provide feedback or suggestions for future improvements?

We welcome any suggestions for feedback on any aspect of these statistics or the data collection, which can be provided to the road safety statistics team.

Details of previous feedback from users of these statistics will be recorded in our user engagement section.

Other questions

Can you tell me about an accident I was involved in?

The department does not hold names in STATS19 so is unable to confirm the identity of casualties. We are therefore unable to confirm whether the information we hold is your personal data. Moreover, the department does not release information that could lead to identify an individual as there is a reasonable chance that an accident would have been reported in local media. Such information could identify and cause distress to the living persons involved in the accident. Disclosure of such information would be likely to breach the first Principle of the Data Protection Act which requires that processing of personal data be fair and lawful and subject to specific conditions.

Therefore, under section 40(2) and (3) and (5B) of the Freedom of Information Act (see Annex A), these data are exempt from disclosure. The department is not obliged to confirm or deny that requested information is held if doing so would disclose personal data, and this would contravene any of the data protection principles.

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Contact details

Road safety statistics

Email roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk