Technical note - PSA target 5

Reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured in Great Britain in road accidents by 40% and the number of children killed or seriously injured by 50%, by 2010 compared with the average for 1994-98, tackling the significantly higher incidence in disadvantaged communities.

Technical Note status: Unchanged

Coverage

The 40% and 50% casualty reduction targets apply to Great Britain as a whole, as they were set in the context of the national strategy that included many measures that would affect the whole country in the same way. However, DfT's locus in local interventions necessary to address the special problems of disadvantaged areas is solely a matter for the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales, and so that part of the target applies to England only.

Definitions

The 40% and 50% targets - these relate to combined totals of deaths and serious injuries

Children - those aged under 16

Killed - people whose injuries cause their death less than 30 days after the accident

Seriously injured - people whose injuries cause them to be detained in hospital as an "in-patient", or include any of the following injuries whether or not they are detained in hospital: fractures, concussion, internal injuries, crushings, burns (excluding friction burns), severe cuts and lacerations, severe general shock requiring medical treatment and injuries causing death 30 or more days after the accident

Road accidents - those involving personal injury on the public highway (including footways) in which at least one road vehicle is involved and which becomes known to the police within 30 days of its occurrence

Disadvantaged communities - those within the ODPM's 88 Neighbourhood Renewal Fund areas

Statistics, baselines and targets

Provisional statistics for each calendar year are published about six months after it ends, with final figures following in September in the annual publication "Road Accidents Great Britain - The Casualty Report".

The PSA target relates to road casualty figures for 2010 to be published in 2011.

The baseline figures are the averages for the calendar years 1994 to 1998:

Total killed or seriously injured 47,656 (after 40% reduction = 28594)

Children killed or seriously injured 6,860 (after 50% reduction = 3430)

For disadvantaged communities, our target is a bigger reduction than for England as a whole in the overall road casualty rate by population for ODPM's 88 Neighbourhood Renewal Fund areas, comparing the figure for 2005 with the average for 1999 to 2001.

Data collection and quality assurance

Road casualty statistics are "National Statistics" and are therefore subject to a regular quality review, which involves an independent assessor.

Details of all reported road accidents in Britain involving personal injury are recorded by the police on the "STATS19" form. Detailed guidance on how to complete the various sections of this form are given in "STATS20" which is available on the DfT website. The STATS19 form itself is an annex to this document.

The police (in a few cases, their local highway authority) process the STATS19 data for electronic transmission to DfT so that the information can be added to the national road casualty database. "STATS21" sets out the minimum validation checks (and associated remedial action) that should be carried out on coded data by the processors before it is sent to DfT. To protect the information that is electronically transmitted to DfT, STATS21 is not publicly available because it sets out the format of the coding system.

On receipt of the data, DfT carries out its own validation checks and refers back any records with errors or suspicious values, such as any where the number of vehicles and/or casualties noted on the attendant circumstances record is inconsistent with the actual number of vehicle/casualty records in the accident set.

Before annual statistics are compiled, DfT carries out further quality checks including ensuring that the number of records it holds agrees with the total held by data providers.

DfT is confident that its casualty statistics based on STATS19 data are accurate, but recognises that, by their nature, they do not cover casualties arising from any accidents that are not reported to the police. Also, studies have shown that the police can underestimate the severity of injuries because of the difficulty of determining this at the scene.