Serious injury and fatality road accidents statistics: EIR release

Information requested

Can you provide the most recent annual statistics for road accidents that resulted in serious injury and fatality on Scottish Roads can you provide a breakdown of the above statistics per road type e.g. Motorway, Rural, Urban etc?

Can you provide the statistics of the primary causes of these accidents on rural roads?

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Your request asked for the most recent annual statistics, so I have provided the analysis below based on the most recent year for which we have complete statistics, which is 2022. This time period is the latest covered in our most recent annual statistics publication: Reported Road Casualties Scotland 2022.

I would note that we do hold collision records for 2023, but these are incomplete as we are still receiving and processing records from Police Scotland for calendar year 2023. These statistics will be published on a provisional basis in May 2024.

We do not hold information on the primary causes of collisions, but I have provided the most common contributory factors recorded for collisions in the table below.

Contributory factors reflect the reporting police officer's initial opinion as to what factors may have contributed to the collision and are recorded at the time of reporting. A reporting officer may select up to 6 contributory factors.

Injury collisions by type of location and severity, 2022
		Fatal	Serious	Total
Motorway		4	71	75
Urban		39	771	810
Rural		110	685	795
Total		153	1527	1680
Top 10 contributory factors for injury collisions in rural areas by severity, 2022
		Fatal	Serious	Total
Loss of control		36	137	173
Failed to look properly (D/R)		18	127	145
Careless / reckless /in a hurry (D/R)		18	98	116
Failed to judge other persons path/speed (D/R)		11	75	86
Poor turn or manoeuvre		12	68	80
Travelling too fast for the conditions		11	55	66
Slippery road (due to weather)		3	61	64
Exceeding speed limit		14	31	45
Impaired by alcohol (D/R)		7	33	40
Illness or disability (mental/physical) (D/R)		11	21	32

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