This publication presents statistics of the numbers of injury road accidents (that is, road accidents in which one or more people are injured or killed) in Scotland which were reported by the police using the “Stats 19” statistical returns (which are described in Annex B). Each accident is classified according to the severity of the injury to the most seriously injured person involved in the accident. Following this Introduction, this publication has several parts. The Summary section shows the main trends in the numbers of road accidents and casualties in recent years. The Commentary includes descriptions of the trends in the numbers of road accidents and casualties, more detailed analyses (of the numbers of accidents, of the statistics about motorists, and of the numbers of casualties) and comparisons of the Scottish figures with some other countries' numbers. The next section provides information on the Casualty Reduction Targets for 2010. This is followed by the Charts and Statistical Tables. There are a number of Annexes, such as a calendar of events affecting road traffic, notes on the collection of road accident statistics (including examples of the kinds of forms that might be used), the definitions of various terms, and information about the changes to the trunk road network and the frequency of use of the values of most of the “Stats 19” variables. There is also an Index, and information about Scottish Executive Road Safety Research publications and Scottish Executive Transport Statistics publications. Most of the data used in this publication were extracted from the Road Accidents statistical database early in September 2003. The statistics given here may differ slightly from those published elsewhere (such as the provisional figures which appeared in “Key Road Accident Statistics”, or previous editions’ figures for the earlier years) because they were extracted on a different date, and the database may have changed between the two dates (e.g.) due to late returns, or due to late corrections being made to returns which had been received earlier. (Author/publisher)
Abstract