Road safety: getting the numbers right

Globally, road crashes are the ninth single biggest cause of death, killing 1.2 million people and injuring another 50 million annually. The World Health Organisation estimates that this could rise to 2.4 million deaths by 2020. Clearly road safety is a major health issue and an important challenge for the transport industry.

Understanding the patterns and trends behind these numbers is the first step in dealing with this global health crisis. Details are needed to inform policy, policing and engineering. Where do crashes happen? When do they happen? What type of vehicle is most often involved? What type of person is mostly likely to be involved? Who is most likely to be injured in one?

On a global scale, this type of information is notoriously difficult to collect. Some countries are good at collecting road crash data and some are not. Many countries don’t collect any data at all, making international comparisons a particular challenge. In Turkey, a death is only officially recorded as caused by a road crash if the person dies at the scene; in the UK, the cut-off is within 30 days of the crash; and in Nigeria, it is within a year. Many countries also have high levels of under-reporting. For example, while Ethiopia reports 2,500 road deaths per year, it has been estimated that the real figure could be up to 20% higher than this. Insufficient data can lead to a dramatic underestimation of the scale of the problem.

In the UK, levels of reporting are good, but not necessarily perfect, a fact recognised – for the first time this year – by the addition of the word ‘Reported’ in front of the title of the annual Department for Transport publication Road Casualties Great Britain. What’s more, as casualty details are collected at the scene by the police, who are not medically trained, the DfT accepts that in some cases the police may incorrectly estimate the injuries.

Steer Davies Gleave has recently carried out two important research projects which have helped to increase understanding of some of the complex factors influencing road safety.

On behalf of the European Commission, we investigated the role of fatigue in coach accidents. The study set out to identify the main causes of coach accidents and to understand the role of driver fatigue, taking into account the accident data, drivers’ hours and the 12-day derogation. The final report included a review of state-of-the-art fatigue related accident research conducted by the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, and studies by other expert groups such as the European Transport Safety Council, the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and the US National Transportation Safety Board. Representing Europe, America and Australia, the literature highlighted the difficulty of isolating fatigue as the cause of an accident, but identified specific factors which increase the risk.

In the City of London – the commercial and financial district in the centre of London – there has been a recent upward trend in pedestrian and cycle casualties which, in 2008, made up more than half the area’s deaths and serious injuries from road accidents. We were asked by the City of London road safety team to investigate this trend; in particular, the impact of two safety campaigns carried out – one with cyclists and heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers and the other with people walking in the City. Our research showed that although there was a small rise in cyclist injury, there were fewer injuries per trip and the pedestrian’s injury rate was static. The work went on to recommend that working with businesses appeared to be the best opportunity to  reduce road injuries, as most people involved had some links with business as either an employee, a contractor or a customer.

In the UK, regional and national transport policies are increasingly featuring measures to encourage cycling and walking as alternative modes of transport, leading to increased interest in ensuring the safety of these road user groups. Elsewhere, particularly in developing countries, new investment in road infrastructure is leading to a corresponding upsurge in road casualties with the rapid proliferation of motor vehicles.