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Road Safety Statistics: Collision Analysis Tool

This data tool allows the user to customise and download data for personal injury reported road collisions in Great Britain, based on data reported by police using the STATS19 system which forms the basis of the department’s published road casualty statistics. Underlying data is available from data.gov.uk.

About the data

Details about the STATS19 data used in this dashboard, with links to further information

Find out more about the data

How to use this tool

An overview of how to use this data tool to download data for personal injury collisions, or casualties within these collisions.

View instructions for use of the dashboard

Get casualty data

Select and download data which counts the number of casualties in reported personal injury collisions in Great Britain.

View casualty data

Get collision data

Select and download data which counts the number of reported personal injury collisions in Great Britain.

View collision data

Get vehicle data

Select and download data which counts the number of vehicles involved in reported personal injury collisions in Great Britain.

View vehicles data


Updates

Latest available data year: 2023

Data last updated: 26 September 2024

Next data update: September 2025


Road safety statistics - contact

Please send any questions or feedback by email to roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk

about-the-data.knit

About the data

Data source

The data in this tool is collected by police forces in Great Britain using the STATS19 system of reporting, which covers collisions on the the public highway involving at least one vehicle, and in which there is at least one human casualty. This collection follows the specification set out in the STATS20 document. A copy of the STATS19 form is also available.

Published statistics and data

STATS19 data is used to produce the annual statistics on road casualties in Great Britain. Besides this tool, data can accessed in a number of ways:

This tool aims to provide access to detailed data which is more flexible than the published data tables, and easier to access than the raw open datasets. However, depending on the analysis required, another of the above products may be more suitable.

Things you need to know

Data coverage

There is no obligation for people to report all personal injury collisions to the police. These figures, therefore, do not represent the full range of all collisions or casualties in Great Britain. All collisions that were reported by the police and the occurred on a public highway involving at least one motor vehicle, horse rider or pedal cyclist, and where at least one person was injured are included in these statistics.

Further information about the data collected, notes, definitions and guidance is available in the background notes and more detailed guidance.

These figures relate to Great Britain. Equivalent data for Northern Ireland is published separately by the Police Service for Northern Ireland.

Notes and definitions

A full list of the definitions used for the variables within this tool can be found in our notes and definitions documentation. The most important definitions are as follows:

Collision: An incident involving personal injury occurring 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. Damage-only collisions, with no human casualties or collisions on private roads or car parks are not included. Note that the term ‘accident’ has previously been used within published statistics.

Casualty: A person killed or injured in a collision. Casualties are sub-divided into killed, seriously injured and slightly injured. Severity is defined as follows:

  • Killed: Human casualties who sustained injuries which caused death less than 30 days after the collision. Confirmed suicides are excluded.

  • Serious and slight: For police forces using an injury-based severity reporting system (IBRS) where the officer records the most severe injury for the casualty, the injuries are automatically converted to a severity level from ‘slight’ to ‘serious’. A list of the injuries and severity allocated to them can be found severity adjustments guide.

Severity adjustment

From 2016 onwards, a large number of police forces changed their reporting systems to adopt injury-based reporting methods. This has impacted on the reporting of injury severity. In previous years, serious injuries may have been classified as slight injuries which impacts the comparability of these figures over time. To allow for this, a statistical method to adjust the reported injury severity was developed, as described in the severity adjustments guide. The adjusted figures can reliably be used to compare trends over time across the country. They are based on what we estimate the totals would be if all police forces were using injury-based severity reporting systems.

The figures in published casualty statistics are based data after this adjustment is applied (‘adjusted figures’) rather than than as originally reported by police (‘unadjusted figures’). In this tool, the user is able to select their preference for adjusted or unadjusted figures. For most analyses, particularly where several years data are selected, we would recommend using adjusted figures. Further details are available in the severity adjustments guide.

Figures as reported by the police (before adjustment) are presented alongside adjusted figures in the published tables.

Further information

Refer to the following publications for more information on this data or to download the complete dataset:

how-to-use.knit

How to use the data tool

This tool enables the creation of custom data tabulations of data for reported road collisions and casualties in Great Britain for years between 2004 and 2022, based on police data reported via the STATS19 system, as outlined on the About the data page. This page briefly outlines how the tool can be used.

1. Decide whether to count casualties, collisions or vehicles

The tool provides data which counts collisions, and separately casualties or vehicles in those collisions. There are separate pages for each of these, so as the first step select whichever count is required. The basic operation of the tool is equivalent for either, although some variables are only available when counting vehicles or casualties.

What type of data do you want to download?

Casualties

For example, the number of casualties by road user type, or by gender and age

Get casualty data

Collisions

For example, the number of collisions by road type, or month of the year

Get collision data

Vehicles

For example, the number of vehicles involved in collisions by vehicle type, or driver age and sex

Get vehicles data

2. Select data options

After selecting the required page (casualties, collisions or vehicles), start by selecting your desired data options, such as severity, geographic (collision) location, years, and additional breakdowns from the ‘select data options’ menu on the left hand side of the main panel. It is necessary to select severity, geography and years (although on loading pre-specified values are chosen). Other filters and breakdowns are optional.

Collision or casualty severity filtering

The tool allows the selection of casualties, collisions or vehicles involved by severity. The user has the option of choosing ‘adjusted’ or ‘unadjusted’ data. For most analyses, we would recommend that ‘adjusted’ data are selected. For further information on severity adjustment, refer to the About the data page.

Geographic filtering

Upon opening the download tool, it will automatically pre-select “Great Britain” as the geographic location, but you can filter the data by country to obtain the Great Britain total, divided into England, Scotland and Wales, or choose to filter by an alternative geography (police force, local authority, parliamentary constituencies or regions).

Other optional filtering

It is possible to apply additional filters to the data - currently for road type, and the type of vehicles involved in collisions (note that selecting this filter will restrict to collisions involving particular vehicle types, rather than the vehicles themselves. For example filtering for collisions involving pedal cycles will also include any other vehicles these in collisions, for example any cars in collisions with pedal cycles). For casualties, it is also possible to filter by casualty (road user) type. It is not necessary to apply these filters, as the default is that all the data will be selected.

Additional variables selection

You have the option of selecting additional variables to include as breakdowns in the data download. These can be selected from the drop down lists. There is no limit on the number of variables that can be selected, although users should be careful that the downloaded file does not become too large

Download format

You have the flexibility to download your data in either CSV or ODS format. ODS files are Excel compatible and include a summary of any filters applied, whereas CSV files should be machine readable but only contain the data itself. Data downloads will appear in the ‘downloads’ folder of your computer, and will be named with the date of download. If several files are downloaded within a short time, then they will appear with numbers appended in order of download.

3. Confirm and create report

To download the data, click on the ‘confirm and create report’ button. In advance of doing this, the data can be previewed in the panel on the right of the ‘select data options’ page. To see a preview, selected ‘Preview Data Table’ from the top menu. If the data shown is not as required, the selected data options can be changed.

Troubleshooting

Delay in updating

On loading or updating options, the tool can a while to update. A wait of up to one minute can be expected; if longer than this then we suggest refreshing the tool or trying again at a different time.

Grey screen

If the screen greys out (this can happen after the app has been left without interaction for a while), then it can be refreshed using the browser refresh button. The performance of the tool can suffer if there are too many users attempting to access it at the same time, so it may be easier to try again at a different time.

Downloaded data too large too open or does not load fully in a spreadsheet

If the data downloaded is too large to open in a spreadsheet package, then it should be possible to download in CSV format and read in to a database. Alternatively, you can try reducing the number of breakdowns included (for example, select fewer years).The tool is designed for smaller bespoke tabulations. For analysis requiring large raw datasets, it may be easier to use our open data files.

Contact

If problems are encountered which cannot be resoved, you can contact the road safety statistics team by email to roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk.

Road casualties



Reported road casualties in Great Britain: selected data

This table previews the selected data. To view the filters applied, click on the next tab ('Selected options'). To download the selected data, click the 'confirm and create report' button at the bottom of the 'select data options' menu on the left.


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Selected data options and filtering

This table summarises the options and filters selected from selection panel on the left. To download the selected data, click the 'confirm and create report' button at the bottom.


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about_casualties.knit

Reported road casualties, Great Britain

Release date: 26 September 2024

Next release: September 2025

Data source: STATS19

Warning: Rows where the value is 0 are not included.

Contacts:

Road Safety Statistics

roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk

Data quality note:

While very few 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, as hospital, survey and compensation claims data all indicate a higher number of casualties than police accident data would suggest.

The introduction of online reporting has impacted the volume and quality of data received by the Department. It is believed that the introduction of online reporting has introduced a different definition for unknown values (for example, unknown to the public as opposed to unknown by the police) that has not been subsequently populated by the police.

Since 2016, changes in severity reporting systems for a large number of police forces mean that serious injury figures, and to a lesser extent slight injury, are not comparable with earlier years. Adjusted figures are available for both accidents and casualties from 2004. More details on severity adjustments and changes in reporting systems can be found in the severity adjustments background notes. For analysis of trends over time across the country, using the adjusted series is recommended. They are based on what we estimate the totals would be if all police forces were using injury-based severity reporting systems.

Geographic areas:

The local authority breakdowns presented in the data are based on the geography as it existed on the date of each respective year’s publication date. Some local authorities have had their time series impacted by geographic boundary changes, where local authorities have been merged or split into new local authorities. In cases where the geographical boundary does not change, but a new code is issued, the new code has been used for the entire back series as the geographies are comparable.

Resources

Road collisions



Reported road collisions in Great Britain: selected data

This table previews the selected data. To view the filters applied, click on the next tab ('Selected options'). To download the selected data, click the 'confirm and create report' button at the bottom of the 'select data options' menu on the left.


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Selected data options and filtering

This table summarises the options and filters selected from selection panel on the left. To download the selected data, click the 'confirm and create report' button at the bottom.


Loading...

about_collisions.knit

Reported road collisions, Great Britain

Release date: 26 September 2024

Next release: September 2025

Data source: STATS19

Warning: Rows where the value is 0 are not included.

Contacts:

Road Safety Statistics

roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk

Data quality note:

While very few 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, as hospital, survey and compensation claims data all indicate a higher number of casualties than police accident data would suggest.

The introduction of online reporting has impacted the volume and quality of data received by the Department. It is believed that the introduction of online reporting has introduced a different definition for unknown values (for example, unknown to the public as opposed to unknown by the police) that has not been subsequently populated by the police.

Since 2016, changes in severity reporting systems for a large number of police forces mean that serious injury figures, and to a lesser extent slight injury, are not comparable with earlier years. Adjusted figures are available for both accidents and casualties from 2004. More details on severity adjustments and changes in reporting systems can be found in the severity adjustments background notes. For analysis of trends over time across the country, using the adjusted series is recommended. They are based on what we estimate the totals would be if all police forces were using injury-based severity reporting systems.

Geographic areas:

The local authority breakdowns presented in the data are based on the geography as it existed on the date of each respective year’s publication date. Some local authorities have had their time series impacted by geographic boundary changes, where local authorities have been merged or split into new local authorities. In cases where the geographical boundary does not change, but a new code is issued, the new code has been used for the entire back series as the geographies are comparable.

Resources

Vehicles involved in road collisions



Vehicles involved in reported road collisions in Great Britain: selected data

This table previews the selected data. To view the filters applied, click on the next tab ('Selected options'). To download the selected data, click the 'confirm and create report' button at the bottom of the 'select data options' menu on the left.


Loading...

Selected data options and filtering

This table summarises the options and filters selected from selection panel on the left. To download the selected data, click the 'confirm and create report' button at the bottom.


Loading...

about_vehicles.knit

Vehicles in reported road collisions, Great Britain

Release date: 26 September 2024

Next release: September 2025

Data source: STATS19

Warning: Rows where the value is 0 are not included.

Contacts:

Road Safety Statistics

roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk

Data quality note:

While very few 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, as hospital, survey and compensation claims data all indicate a higher number of casualties than police accident data would suggest.

The introduction of online reporting has impacted the volume and quality of data received by the Department. It is believed that the introduction of online reporting has introduced a different definition for unknown values (for example, unknown to the public as opposed to unknown by the police) that has not been subsequently populated by the police.

Since 2016, changes in severity reporting systems for a large number of police forces mean that serious injury figures, and to a lesser extent slight injury, are not comparable with earlier years. Adjusted figures are available for both accidents and casualties from 2004. More details on severity adjustments and changes in reporting systems can be found in the severity adjustments background notes. For analysis of trends over time across the country, using the adjusted series is recommended. They are based on what we estimate the totals would be if all police forces were using injury-based severity reporting systems.

Geographic areas:

The local authority breakdowns presented in the data are based on the geography as it existed on the date of each respective year’s publication date. Some local authorities have had their time series impacted by geographic boundary changes, where local authorities have been merged or split into new local authorities. In cases where the geographical boundary does not change, but a new code is issued, the new code has been used for the entire back series as the geographies are comparable.

Resources