This study is about police reports on casualties which form the basis of the majority of work on road safety in the European countries. However, comparisons between registers operated by the Accidents and Emergency Departments and registers operated by the police have shown a considerable understatement of th number of casualties. Studies have concluded that the coverage of casualties reported by the police is greater for seriously injured persons than for slightly injured persons, and that the greatest coverage is for persons injured in a vehicle and lowest coverage is for persons injured on a bicycle. This paper describes comparisons made between the National Register on Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) Accidents (RTA) and the National Patient Register (NPR) for 1984 using the personal code numbers for injured persons as the link between the two records.
Samenvatting