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The casualty reduction targets for 2010

Figure 9 Progress towards the 2010 casualty reduction targets

The casualty reduction targets for the year 2010

In March 2000, the UK Government, the Scottish Executive and the National Assembly for Wales announced a new national road safety strategy and casualty reduction targets for 2010. These new targets were introduced to focus on achieving a further substantial improvement in road safety over the next ten years, with particular emphasis on child casualties. The new targets, which are given in the document "Tomorrow's roads - safer for everyone", are based on the annual average casualty levels over the period 1994 to 1998. By 2010 it is hoped that there will be, compared with the average for 1994-98:

• a 40% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents.
• a 50% reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured; and
• a 10% reduction in the slight casualty rate, expressed as the number of people slightly injured per 100 million vehicle kilometres.

Progress towards the 2010 casualty reduction targets

The charts on the page opposite show progress towards the casualty reduction targets for 2010. The thick black lines show the figures that have been recorded so far, the horizontal dashed lines show the baseline averages, and the dotted lines going downwards indicate how the figures would have to fall if the targets for 2010 were to be achieved by means of a constant percentage reduction in each year. The method of deriving these 'target lines' is described at the end of this section. With this method, the target lines imply the following reductions from the 1994-98 baselines by the year 2005:

Therefore any falls which are greater than these suggest more rapid progress than the relevant indicative target line.

Progress is monitored using statistics produced from police forces' "Stats 19" returns. As mentioned in the Introduction, these cover only accidents of which the police are aware: accidents not reported by the public to the police are not counted. When publishing research into this "under-reporting", the Department for Transport (DfT) made some points, including:

• it is widely known that not all road traffic accidents are reported to the police - neither a new nor solely British phenomenon, and the subject of a major DfT study in 1996; and
• the data for 1994-1998 (the baseline for the road casualty reduction targets) would also have been affected by under-reporting.
• So, although they do not cover all casualties, the "Stats 19" figures will be reliable indicators of progress if the level of "under-reporting" does not change greatly. DfT added that:
• the work done so far cannot answer the question of whether there has been a systematic change in the degree of under-reporting; and
• as a result of the reports, DfT will commission a more extensive project to address this.
• More information on these matters is given, later in this publication, in the section on "Comparisons of Police 'Stats 19' road casualty figures with some other figures for Scotland".

The figures relating to each target:

• 2,938 people were reported as killed or seriously injured in 2005, 39% (1,900) below the 1994-98 average of 4,838 - so the 2010 target of a 40% fall has almost been achieved.
• 368 children were reported as killed or seriously injured in 2005, 56% (474) below the 1994-98 average of 842, so the 2010 target of a 50% reduction has been met.
• The slight casualty rate of 34.84 casualties per 100 million vehicle kilometres in 2005 was 25% below the 1994-98 baseline average of 46.42, so the 2010 target of a 10% reduction has been achieved.

Table G Killed and seriously injured casualties by mode of transport

Slight casualties by mode of transport

1. Light goods vehicles and heavy goods vehicles.
2. Taxis, minibuses and other modes of transport
3. A percentage change is not shown if the baseline figure is small.

Killed or seriously injured reported casualties by mode of transport

As noted above, the relevant indicative "target line" figure for 2005 is 28.0% below the 1994-98 baseline average. The top part of Table G shows that, in 2005, the numbers of killed or seriously injured ( KSI) casualties for most modes of transport were well below this target line, and some had bettered the 2010 target of a 40% reduction, with falls such as 47% for pedestrian KSI casualties and 42% for car KSI casualties. However, there was one exception: motorcycle KSI casualties rose by 13%.

Just under half of all the 2,938 KSI casualties in 2005 were car users. The total of 1,452 car KSI casualties in 2005 was 42% below the 1994-98 baseline average of 2,501, and therefore better than the 2010 target of a 40% reduction. There were 736 pedestrian KSI casualties in 2005, 47% fewer than the annual average of 1,376 for the period 1994-98. However, the number of motorcycle KSI casualties in 2005 was 403, an increase of 13% (48) from the 1994-98 average: this was the only category of road user for which the figure in 2005 was above the indicative target line. There were 132 pedal cycle KSI casualties, 47% below the 1994-98 average. The numbers of KSI casualties in 2005 were all under 100 for each of the remaining categories of road user (bus/coach, goods and others), and showed falls of between 36% and 43% from the baseline average..

Child killed or seriously injured reported casualties by mode of transport

The indicative target line figure for 2005 is 36.0% below the 1994-98 average. The middle part of Table G shows that, in 2005, the figures for the three main categories of child road user casualty were all better than the 2010 target of a 50% reduction.

About two-thirds of the 368 children killed or seriously injured ( KSI) in 2005 were pedestrians. The number of child pedestrian KSI casualties in 2005 was 243, 319 (57%) below the 1994-98 average of 562, and therefore better than the 2010 target of a 50% reduction. There were 69 child car KSI casualties in 2005, a fall of 76 (52%) from the 1994-98 average of 145, and therefore better than the target. Child pedal cycle KSI casualties in 2005 were also better than the target: there were 30, a reduction of 70% from the 1994-98 average of 100. There are few child KSI casualties for other modes of transport, so small fluctuations in their numbers can cause apparently large percentage changes from the 1994-98 baseline average levels.

Slightly injured reported casualties by mode of transport

By 2005, the indicative target line has a reduction of 6.5% in the slight casualty rate. Because of the limited availability of detailed reliable road traffic estimates for Scotland, the bottom part of Table G shows the numbers of slight casualties (rather than slight casualty rates) for various categories of road user. The table also shows the overall total volume of traffic and the overall slight casualty rate. Most of the road user categories had percentage falls in their numbers of slight casualties that were better than the slight casualty rate's target for 2010 of a 10% reduction. Almost two-thirds of slight casualties in 2005 were car users. The total number of car user slight casualties in 2005 was 9,503, 12% below the 1994-98 average of 10,859, and therefore better than the (slight casualty rate's) target fall of 10% by 2010. There were 2,297 slight pedestrian casualties 24% less than the 1994-98 average of 3,009, a reduction much better than the target (for the slight casualty rate). Bus and coach user slight casualties totalled 783 in 2005, 14% fewer than the 1994-98 average, the number of pedal cyclist slight casualties (648) was 37% below the baseline average, goods vehicle user slight casualties (494) were 15% below the baseline average and "other" road user slight casualties (478) were 5% less than the baseline average. However, there was a rise in motorcyclist slight casualties (679 in 2005, 17% above the 1994-98 average).

Assessing progress towards the casualty reduction targets

The indicative target lines shown in Figure 5

One way of assessing progress towards the targets is to compare actual casualty numbers in each year with an indicative line that starts at the baseline figure in 1996 and falls, by a constant percentage reduction in each subsequent year, to the target for 2010. This is the approach adopted by the GB Road Safety Advisory Panel. The indicative line starts at the baseline figure in 1996 because that is the middle year of the 'baseline' period. Other approaches could have been used: there are many ways of producing lines that indicate how casualty numbers might fall fairly steadily to the targets for 2010.

The method adopted to produce the indicative target lines shown in Figure 5 involves a constant percentage reduction in each year after 1996. The resulting indicative target lines represent the percentages of the baseline averages which are shown in the table below. They are not straight lines, because of the "compounding over the years" effect of constant annual percentage reductions (to two decimal places, the falls are: 3.58% p.a. for killed or seriously injured casualties; 4.83% p.a. for child killed or seriously injured casualties; and 0.75% p.a. for the slight casualty rate).

Other statistics for monitoring progress

Table 40 in the main section of this publication shows the "baseline" figures for each local authority area for the first two targets (separately for trunk roads, local authority roads and all roads), along with the corresponding figures for each year from 1996 and the latest five years' averages. Table 41(a) provides figures for each local authority area related to the third target, and Table 42 shows figures for each Police Force area related to all three targets. In addition, many other tables include the 1994-98 baseline averages.

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