SafetyNet was an Integrated Project part-funded by the European Commission which ran for 4 years from May 2004. One task of the project dealt with the “estimation of the real number of road casualties”. This was achieved by comparing in eight countries the details of road accident casualties who are recorded in the national road accident database with those who have been recorded in hospital records. This report describes the UK contribution: a study which compared Scottish STATS19 casualty records from 1997-2005 with medical records from the Scottish Hospital In-Patient System (SHIPS). Neither source includes personal identifiers, so the basic approach consisted of comparing the available statistical information in each STATS19 record, such as age, sex and road user type, with the corresponding information in each SHIPS record. Where the information in a pair of records agreed sufficiently well, the records were linked and the SHIPS medical details were added to the STATS19 record. This allows the level of reporting in the police data to be assessed, and the police coding of injury severity to be compared with medical injury codes. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting