Data is a useful starting point for campaigning – to show the impact road death and injury is having on communities and to make the case for change. These data sources can help construct a story. But start by picking those you find easiest to use and that help with that story. Don’t think you have to use them all!
This information has been brought together by Action Vision Zero, RoadPeace and 20’s Plenty for Us and is current at 2019. Please note that web-based data sources do not stay in the same place for ever and if the links have moved it might take a bit of hunting around to relocate them.
UK data
Road casualties
Maps: CrashMap, CycleStreets and Bikedata make it easer to navigate collision data reports collected by the police (STATS19).
Department for Transport (DfT) provides a large amount of data on their Road accidents and safety statistics collection. This includes data about Reported road casualties, Excel tables for reported personal injury road casualties and Road safety data to create spreadsheets for further analysis. Please NB that since 2016, the DfT points out that changes in severity reporting systems for a large number of police forces mean that serious injury figures, and to a lesser extent slight injuries, as reported by the police are not comparable with earlier years.
We have put together a number of spreadsheets that will make searching for data easier.
1. Road Casualties Great Britain 2000-2018. Use our simple spreadsheet below to analyse the number of casualties by severity (fatal, serious and slight) and by mode of travel (pedestrian, cyclist, car occupant) for each local authority. You can also analyse the structure (%) of the casualties for each year. This appears in the worksheet “Analysis” available to download here.
2. Fatal & Serious Casualties Great Britain 2014-2018. We also have data on all the fatal and serious injuries in Great Britain for the years 2014 to 2018, available here.
There are two worksheets. The first is PIVOT-Highway Authority which allows searches of casualties by Highway Authority. The second PIVOT-Police Force allows search by Police Force. There are two searchable tables on each worksheet…the upper one for fatal casualties and the lower one for fatal and serious casualties. You can use these tables to go far deeper into the data if you wish, but these pre-set ones should show the core casualty data for where you live.
DfT’s Vehicle speed compliance statistics provide information on the speeds drivers choose to travel at and their compliance with speed limits.
For London, Transport for London has collected Road safety data as far back as 2005. Action Vision Zero has produced a summary spreadsheet of this casualty data (available to download here (50MB)). This covers the years 2005 to 2019. This can be searched using the Pivot table in the Analysis worksheet.
Traffic volumes & numbers of licensed vehicles
DfT’s Road traffic statistics provide street-level road traffic estimates, with an interactive mapping tool. The datasets, available via Excel/csv downloads, can isolate individual local authorities and allow comparisons of different types of vehicles, streets and roads between 2000 and 2018. The data is also available in map and chart summaries.
Vehicle statistics including data about the number of licensed vehicles, new vehicle registrations and roadworthiness testing (including MOTs) is available here.
DfT’s vehicle licensing statistics at a postcode level can be downloaded as an .ods file here. This data is also available at a local authority level here.
For London, the London Datastore has current and historic licensed vehicle data at a borough level and broken down by vehicle type.
ROADS POLICING – ENFORCEMENT
In the following charts, we look at Roads Policing Enforcement by Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) area which is valuable in understanding the levels of enforcement activity that are occurring. The source is Home Office (2020), Police Powers and Procedures, England and Wales and the principal data source is:
A few notes are of value in relation to this data.
- Data sources are provided in each worksheet.
- The data on motoring offences in these spreadsheets is published by the Home Office in their annual Police Powers and Procedures bulletin.
- It is from the cental PentiP database which all police services use in England and Wales.
- The number of offences refers to the total number of fixed penalty notices, including those that resulted in a driver training course or a court prosecution.
- What it does not include is:
- Those FPNs which were cancelled.
- Motoring offences which could only be prosecuted at court. These include the causing death by driving offences, dangerous driving, drink/drug driving etc.
A. Numbers of Home Office reported motoring offences, England and Wales (2018) by PCC area and by offence
B. Reported motoring offences – Per Capita (population), England and Wales (2018) by PCC area and by offence
C. Reported motoring offences – Per Killed & Seriously Injured Road Casualty, England and Wales (2018) by PCC area and by offence
D. Reported speeding sanctions – mode of detection, England and Wales (2018) by PCC area
E. Graphs of reported officer detected speeding sanctions – England and Wales (2018) ranking by PCC area on a per capita and per KSI basis
Air pollution
Defra’s Interactive monitoring networks map can be used to explore data from UK’s air quality monitoring networks including real-time and historic performance.
Air Quality England provides air quality information for a limited number of local authorities and the private sector across England.
London Air from King’s College London provides interactive maps of real-time and historic air quality data for London, including performance against targets. The Annual Pollution Maps are particularly useful, showing the annual mean pollution for four different pollutants in 2016 across London. (Annual averages provide an indication of long-term exposure, which is now understood to be more important than exposure to short-term peaks). Areas above EU Limit Values are shown as yellow to red on the maps.
Noise pollution
Defra’s noise maps are now hosted by Extrium with explanations of the data on the home page. The England Noise Viewer is here and the Wales Noise Viewer is here.
Public health
The Local Authority Health Profiles pull together data on a range of health and wellbeing indicators for each local authority in England. Indicators include road casualties; physical activity and excess weight; and levels of childhood obesity. They also allow comparison between local authorities and with England and regional averages.
The National Child Measurement Programme gathers data on children’s weights between 2006/07 to the present.
Transport usage
Following the demise of the Neighbourhood Statistics website, the most accessible location for Census data is Nomis which has a wider role than its title of Official Labour Market Statistics. Census 2011 data is available here and the 2001 Census here.
In relation to transport and travel choices, there is data on vehicle ownership (Car or Van Availability from the 2011 Census, Code: KS404EW) and modes of travel again (Method of Travel to Work, from the 2011 Census, Code: QS701EW).
In London, GLA’s London Datastore has a range of information including on transport and the environment.
Oliver O’Brien from UCL has created astonishingly useable maps with a range of data sources at Datashine including DataShine: Census and DataShine Commute that allows users to map methods of travel to work.
Costs of casualties and physical inactivity
Estimates of the costs of collisions in your Local Authority area and the financial impact of physical inactivity can be calculated from the spreadsheet from the 20’s Plenty for Us website here.
Roads deaths and homicides
Data showing the comparison between the numbers of homicides in the UK and the numbers of road deaths can be seen here
Under-reporting road casualties. Reported and reported casualties. Our short breifing on this can be seen here.
Motoring Offences and Magistrates Courts. Data on the number of motoring offences as a proportion of all proceedings at Magistrates Courts by police force can be seen here.
Global statistics
World Health Organisation Global status report on road safety paints an appalling picture of the harm caused by motor vehicles. Some 1.35 million people killed on the world’s roads in 2018 and 20-50 million injured. More here.
European statistics
Access the European Transport Safety Council’s latest road death data here. The 13th Annual Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) Report (2018) report is available here.
EU and other European country data is also housed at Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Road safety data is here and the statistics are here.
Dudden Hill Lane Crash Map 2017 – 2019 – All severities (www.crashmap.co.uk)
