Follow-up of traffic victims during the 30 days period after the accident : special report. On behalf of the Operational Committee for International Road Traffic and Accident Database IRTAD.

This special report of the operational committee of IRTAD-OECD describes the problems that even exists with the national registration of traffic deaths. Although it generally is assumed that road fatalities are completely recorded, on the basis of this report it must be acknowledged that this is not the case. Moreover, a good international comparability of road fatalities is still troublesome, due to national definition differences. The non-registered road fatalities and inaccurateness in the reporting of road fatalities is a problem in every country, even if this officially is denied. The circumstance that the percentages of non-registered fatalities are rather small may indicate that it is not a very serious problem for national policy making. However, if the incompleteness varies over the years (which is unknown) it even could lead to partially wrong inferences. For example, a change of 2% or 3% in the number of annual road fatalities easily can be caused by variations in the incompleteness of the national registration. Therefore, as this report shows, great care must be taken for the registration procedures and for the follow-up of the possible later death after the accident in order to ensure that the best possible date are obtained and that reliable inferences for policy making can be drawn. This report foremost points to the implementation of the now internationally agreed definition of a fatality as death within 30 days after the accident, which still is not the definition that is used in all OECD-countries. Since incompleteness of registration for fatalities generally is relatively minor, it are up to now the differences in the fatality definition that causes the main problems for an international comparison. Due to the many national different definitions and partially unknown, but sometimes large, differences in non-registered road casualties or damage-only accidents, it will remain nearly always impossible to compare these other data internationally in a valid way. Since numerical corrections for definition differences of a road fatalities are approximately known for national totals of fatalities and are applied to the aggregated fatality data in IRTAD, it still is possible to use the data on fatalities in IRTAD for a more or less reliable international comparison. The harmonization of the definition and registration practices of fatalities in the source data of all the nations, however, is urgently needed for a really valid international comparative analyses of fatality subcategories partitioned by variables that describe the accident circumstances of the fatalities. The value of this report mainly is to make the national responsible organisations aware of the often unknown problems and pitfalls in the registration of road fatalities. lt is hoped that the comparison of national registration practices in this report will contribute to the source harmonization of a road fatality as death within 30 days after the accident and the establishment of the best registration practice in all nations. This is of utmost importance, otherwise detailed inferences on road safety would become hardly possible on an international level. lt also would contribute to a higher validity of the use IRTAD.