Latest road casualty stats deliver mixed news

12.00 | 5 August 2016 | | 2 comments

The Government’s latest road casualty statistics show no change in the number of road deaths, a slight increase in the number of KSIs and a fall in the number of overall casualties.

The Parliamentary group PACTS has described the figures as ‘worrying in a number of ways’.

The DfT stats, published yesterday (4 August) show 1,780 road deaths in Great Britain in the 12-months ending March 2016, unchanged from the same period in 2015.

The figures highlight a 2% rise (up to 24,610) in the number of killed or seriously injured casualties (KSI), although this is described by the DfT as ‘statistically insignificant’.

However, the DfT says there was a significant change in total casualties which fell by 2% to 187,050. With motor traffic levels increasing by 1.8%, the overall casualty rate per vehicle mile decreased by 4%.

In terms of road user type, there was a decrease in KSI casualties for pedal cyclists (3%) and motorcyclists (1%), but an increase among pedestrians (2%) and car occupants (5%).

Looking specifically at the first quarter of 2016 (January to March), 430 people were killed in
reported road accidents, an increase of 13% from the same quarter in 2015. KSI casualties increased by 14% to 5,890 while casualties of all severities increased by 2% to 43,990.

Commenting on the figures, David Davies, executive director of PACTS , said: “The Government is failing in its manifesto commitment to reduce the number of road users killed or seriously injured every year. There has been very little reduction in these figures since 2010.

“We need to see stronger action on a range of fronts, particularly drink-driving which accounts for 13% of all deaths.”

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    Hi Nadeem,

    Two of the three forces that I do analysis for have transitioned to CRASH this year (both at the start of March). So far there hasn’t been a notable increase or decrease in the number of serious collisions recorded year on year (I have used collisions as we had a large bus crash recently that will throw off the serious casualty numbers).

    However, we have also found that there are a fair number of records that are still waiting to be finalised and exported from CRASH to the DfT/local authorities from at least one of these forces, so the actual number of serious collisions could end up being higher than last year once these appear on our stats.

    In truth, with the system only being in use for the last 5 months it is too early to tell what the impact of CRASH will be on our collision/casualty numbers in the North East, but as all three forces tend to see similar annual patterns in collision numbers then the force that has not taken CRASH yet will be a useful control subject to highlight any major differences.


    Peter Slater, North East Regional Road Safety Resource
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    Has anyone working in local government or transport experienced an increase in the number of recorded serious casualties following the introduction of the Crash reporting system?


    Nadeem
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