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Road Accidents Scotland 2003

5. Comparisons of Scottish figures against those of other countries

5.1 Casualty rates: against England & Wales(see Tables A to D on the pages which follow)

Historically, the "killed" and "killed and seriously injured" casualty rates per head of population in Scotland have been above those for England & Wales, whereas the "all severities" casualty rate has been lower in Scotland than in England & Wales. In 2003, Scotland's casualty rates were 9% higher (killed), 1% higher (killed and serious) and 28% lower (all severities). In all three cases, this represented an improvement in the position in Scotland relative to that in England & Wales (compared with the 1994-98 average).

For years, the Scottish child casualty rates per head of population have been higher than those of England & Wales for "killed and seriously injured" and slightly lower for "all severities". In 2003, the Scottish rates were 21% higher (killed) than those in England and Wales, 29% higher (killed and seriously injured) and 8% lower (all severities). In all these cases, this represented an improvement in Scotland's figures relative to England & Wales (compared with the 1994-98 average).

It should be noted that the ratio of the fatality rates for Scotland and for England and Wales can fluctuate markedly from year to year, particularly for the child fatality rates due to the relatively small numbers in Scotland, (which may be subject to year-to-year changes which are large in percentage terms). Therefore subsequent paragraphs do not refer to the fatality rates for children using different modes of transport. In addition, it should be remembered that the rates for some other sub-groups may be affected by year-to-year fluctuations: for example, the numbers are relatively small for most categories of child "killed and seriously injured" casualties in Scotland.

The casualty rates of car users in Scotland have for many years been substantially higher than those of England & Wales for "killed" and "killed and seriously injured" casualties, while for "all severities" the rate has been much lower. In 2003, Scotland's car user fatality rate was 23% higher than that of England & Wales, the "killed and seriously injured" rate was 15% higher, while the "all severity" car user rate was 29% lower. For child car users, the "killed and seriously injured" rate was 33% higher in Scotland and the "all severities" rate was 22% less than that of England and Wales.

In 2003, the pedestrian fatality rate per capita was 8% lower in Scotland than England & Wales, the "killed and seriously injured" rate in Scotland was 12% higher and the "all severities" rate was 7% lower. The child pedestrian casualty rates in Scotland were 42% higher ("killed and seriously injured") and 16% higher (all severities) than those for England & Wales.

Pedal cyclists casualty rates (all ages) in Scotland were substantially lower than in England & Wales in 2003 for "killed and seriously injured" (37% lower) and for "all severities" (48% lower). The child pedal cycle casualty "all severities" rate was also lower in Scotland than in England & Wales. These differences may reflect the fact that, according to the National Travel Survey, on average, people in Scotland do not travel as far by bicycle as people in England and Wales.

Further information about the numbers of casualties in England and Wales, and for Great Britain as a whole, can be found in "Road Casualties Great Britain 2003", which is published by the Department for Transport.

5.2 Road deaths : international comparison 2002(see Tables E and F)

This section compares Scotland's road death rates in 2002 with the fatality rates of some countries in Western Europe and some developed countries world-wide. The comparisons involve a total of 31 countries (including Scotland, and counting England, Wales and Northern Ireland as individual countries) and also figures for England and Wales as a whole and for the European Union (the EU figures are for 2001 and are based on the EU membership at that time). The fatality rates were calculated on a "per capita" basis (the statistics given are rates per million population), and the countries were then listed in order of their fatality rates in Table E sections (a), (b) and (c). Section (d) of the table ranks countries by a set of car user fatality rates which were calculated on a "per motor vehicle" basis (the statistics given are rates per million motor vehicles).

The figures used for foreign countries were obtained in October 2004 from tables on the International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD) Web site. The IRTAD Web site address is

http://www.bast.de/htdocs/fachthemen/irtad//english/englisch.html .

In accordance with the commonly agreed international definition, most countries define a fatality as being due to a road accident if death occurs within 30 days of the accident. However, the official road accident statistics of some countries limit the fatalities to those occurring within shorter periods after the accident. The numbers of deaths, and the death rates, which appear in the IRTAD tables take account of the adjustment factors used by the Economic Commission for Europe and the European Conference of Ministers of Transport to represent standardised 30-day numbers of deaths.

In 2002, Scotland's overall road death rate of 60 per million population was the fifth lowest of the 31 countries surveyed (the entry for "England and Wales" is ignored for these purposes because both England and Wales appear separately in the table), and was only 57% of the overall EU figure (which was 106 per million population).

However, Scotland's overall road safety position does not appear as good when the fatality rates of pedestrians are considered separately. In 2002, Scotland's pedestrian fatality rate was 14 per million population, just below the overall EU figure of 15 per million population. Scotland ranked sixteenth of the 31 countries surveyed (again, ignoring the combined "England and Wales" figure).

When the car user fatality rate is calculated on a per capita basis, Scotland has a low car user fatality rate (30 per million population: the fifth lowest). However, it may be argued that the car user fatality rate should be calculated on "per motor vehicle" basis, in order to try to approximate better the differing levels of car use in different countries, and hence reflect differences between countries in car drivers' "exposure to risk". (Rates based on the amount of car traffic in each country would be even better, but the data required to calculate them are not available for some countries.) When car user fatality rates are calculated on a "per motor vehicle" basis, Scotland's car user fatality rate of 66 per million motor vehicles was the sixth best out of the 31 countries surveyed. The rate for England and Wales was 58 per million motor vehicles, and the overall EU figure was 99.

The fatality rates per head of population for 29 countries (including Scotland) are shown, for each of four broad age-groups, in Table F. In this table, reflecting the availability of these figures from IRTAD there are figures for the United Kingdom, but no separate figures for "England and Wales" and "Northern Ireland"; also there are no figures for the EU as a whole. In most cases, Scotland has one of the lowest rates per capita. The Scottish rate is the fifth lowest for child casualties aged 0-14, the fourth lowest for those aged 15-24, the fifth lowest for those aged 25-64 and the lowest for those aged 65+.

International comparisons of road safety are based on road death rates, because that is the only basis for which there is an international standard definition. As indicated above, the OECD IRTAD tables provide comparable figures for each country, after making adjustments to the data for countries which do not collect their figures on the standard basis. One should not try to compare different countries' overall road accident casualty rates (i.e. the total numbers killed or injured, relative to the population of each country) because there is no internationally-adopted standard definition of a injury road accident. There are considerable differences between countries in the coverage of their injury road accident statistics. For example, many countries count only accidents which result in someone being admitted to hospital - so their figures would not include the kinds of accident which, in Britain, are classified as causing only "slight" injuries or certain types of serious injury. Because many countries' definitions of injury road accidents are much "narrower" than the definition used in the UK, their reported numbers of injury road accidents will appear low relative to ours - so comparing the reported numbers of people injured in road accidents may provide a misleading impression of different countries' road safety records.

⁽¹⁾ Child 0-15 years

⁽¹⁾ Child 0-15 years

(1) Source: International Road Traffic and Accident Database (OECD). The basis of the numbers is described in the text.

Some of the countries may have updated their figures since they provided the data to OECD.

(1) Source: International Road Traffic and Accident Database (OECD). The basis of the numbers is described in the text

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