The statistics refer to casualties resulting from personal injury accidents on public roads reported to the police and forwarded to the Welsh Government. Road Accident Data contains details of the accident, the number of vehicles involved and information on casualties. Accident data contains: the description and location, the number of casualties and vehicles, severity of accident, type of road and contributory factors. Vehicle description: includes details of vehicle type, age of driver/rider. Casualty description: provides details of the severity of casualty, casualty class and age. The Data Dictionary provides a detailed breakdown description of the variables that are included in all three categories.
Data collection and calculation
The police compile statistical data about road traffic accidents and casualties (called Stats19 data) for the Welsh Government and the Department for Transport (DfT). This follows police attendance at accidents that involve any personal injury, together with members of the public reporting personal injury accidents directly to the police. The figures are based on information available to the Welsh Government 14 weeks after the end of the latest quarter. The Stats19 data are a set of numeric and alphabet characters. A casualty is defined as, a person killed or injured in an accident. One accident may give rise to several casualties. Casualties and accidents are subdivided into killed, seriously injured and slightly injured categories. Casualties reported as killed include only those cases where death occurs in less than 30 days as a result of the accident. They do not include those who died as a result of natural causes (e.g. heart attack) rather than as a result of the accident, nor do they include confirmed suicides. The classification of each accident is the most seriously injured casualty. For example if there are 5 casualties but only 1 fatality, the accident is classed as a fatal.
Data reference periods
1993 to 2014
Users, uses and context
There are a variety of organisations that use the Welsh road traffic accident and casualty data. The Welsh Government uses road traffic accident and casualty data to help set road safety policy. It is also used for performance indicators, both for the Welsh Government’s Transport Strategy and for some Health Performance indicators. They are also component indicators in the Welsh Government’s Child Poverty and Sustainable Development indicators. Other users include Highway Authorities (on behalf of the Welsh Government, which is responsible for the motorway and trunk road network) and Local Authorities (which are responsible for other roads in Wales). Other bodies involved in road safety include the Safety Camera Partnership, Trunk Road Agents, and Police & Community Safety Partnerships.
The figures shown may change in future if there are late amendments. Similarly, the figures for earlier years may differ from those previously published. The figures cover only road accidents reported to the police involving personal injury. This data is obtained from administrative sources and thus may be affected by changes in procedures within those systems. There is some possibility of under-reporting and under-recording as well as for the misclassification of accidents though these are minimised by local authorities and the Welsh Government conducting a number of data validations. For example, Welsh Government data analysts may query the location of an accident with a police force when the grid reference of an accident is in a different local authority to the one specified in the data return. These issues are discussed in more detail in a Statistical Article ‘Quality Report for Welsh Road Casualties’. This article also summarises the sources and methods used to compile the road accident and casualty figures for Wales. It also reviews the quality of the resulting figures in terms of the six dimensions of statistical quality of the European Statistical System. The aim is to provide background information about road casualty statistics for Wales in a single document for all users of the published statistics. It is available from the following link: http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/police-recorded-road-casualties/quality-report
Keywords
Transport Road Accidents Collisions Fatal Killed Serious Slight Police Police-recorded
Recorded road accidents by number of casualties, severity of accident and police force area
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