This article is a brief review of how road traffic accident statistics involving personal injury have been collected and analysed, since the first statistics became available in 1909, to the first attempt at a national analysis of fatal road accident causation in 1933. In 1909 the Home Office was requested to issue an annual Return of Street Accidents to the House of Commons. The Home Office Return was based on County and City Police districts. It provided figures for fatal and non-fatal accidents, divided into vehicle categories. From 1914, pedal cycle accident figures became available. The first moves to assess accident causation came in 1926 when the National Safety First Association, chaired by Colonel Pickard, undertook a three year study of fatal road accidents. This resulted in 1929 in the first report of the Royal Commission on Transport (Command Paper 3365), which led to moves towards a centralised system of data collection and analysis for road traffic accidents. In 1929, a committee on Street Accident Investigation was formed. A sub-committee set up to investigate the methodology of collective tabulating and analysing data, and met intermittently between 1929-1932. On January 1st 1933, the first national collection of road accident data for statistical analysis began. It was restricted to fatal road accidents and lasted until 31st December 1933.
Abstract