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Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain: Quarterly Provisional Estimates Q3 2009

This publication includes National Statistics on road casualties in personal injury road accidents reported to the police in Great Britain for the third quarter of 2009, according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.

The provisional estimates show the number of fatalities in road accidents were down by 7 per cent for the twelve months ending September 2009 compared to the previous twelve months. Total casualties were down 5 per cent and killed and seriously injured casualties down by 6 per cent, compared with the previous 12 months.

The Department has also published the preliminary results of the 2008 review of the road casualty reporting system (STATS 19).

Notes

Road Casualties in Great Britain: Quarterly Provisional Estimates is a series providing estimates of personal injury road accidents and their casualties. These estimates are published to allow emerging trends to be monitored between the publications of annual figures. It should be noted that no single quarter's figures should be taken in isolation, especially if they appear to show a change in trend, as there are random fluctuations particularly in the smaller categories of road user.
Comparisons with death registrations show that very few, if any; road accident fatalities are not reported to the police. It has long been known that a considerable proportion of non-fatal casualties are not known to the police and hospital, survey and compensation claims data all indicate a higher number of casualties than are reported. Our best current estimate, derived from the Department’s National Travel Survey (NTS) data with cross-checking against other data sources, is that the total number of road casualties in Great Britain each year, including those not reported to police, is within the range 680 thousand to 920 thousand with a central estimate of 800 thousand. A discussion of how these estimates have been derived, and their limitations, together with information on complementary sources of data on road accidents and casualties, are contained in an article published by the Department in Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: 2008 Annual report (Article 5, pages 58-79), which can be found at: http://www.dft.gov.uk/adobepdf/162469/221412/221549/227755/rrcgb2008.pdf
Police data on road accidents (STATS19), whilst not perfect, 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.
Estimates are based on information available to the Department for Transport fourteen weeks after the end of the latest quarter. For this release figures are based on information available on 18 January 2010.