Though the connection between social deprivation and accident generation has been acknowledged for many years, there is little hard research evidence to assist policy makers and planners in getting to grips with the nature of the problem and to seek solutions. The council has recently recorded the postcode of the address of each Lothian-based casualty for every accident in Lothian since 1 January 1990. Casualties not resident in Lothian have been assigned a code relating to the country of residence. Some 23,000 addresses have been postcoded. The analysis of these data provides the necessary hard evidence to assist the road safety planning process and policy development. The data have been stratified by casualty been stratified by casualty age gender and road user type. There are highly significant correlations between deprivation indices and casualty rates. Distance to accident has also been examined. The concept of local and non-local accidents has been developed - this can have an important bearing on resource allocation. It is expected that a better understanding of how socio-economic factors affect accident generation will lead to better value in road safety expenditure.
Samenvatting