Road accidents on A82, A9 and in Highlands: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/17/01796
Date received: 4 August 2017
Date responded: 6 September 2017

Information requested

1. Can you confirm how many accidents have occurred on the A82 Inverness to Glasgow trunk road over the last five years and with a breakdown for each year.

2. Can you also confirm how many of these accidents were fatal.

3. Can you also confirm how many of these accidents have occurred in the Highland region and also how many were fatal.

4. Can you give the figures for the traffic flow/number of vehicles on the A82 per year for the last five years.

5. Can you confirm how many accidents have occurred on the A9 trunk route between Caithness and Stirling over the last five years with a breakdown for each year.

6. Can you also confirm how many of these accidents were fatal.

7. Can you also confirm how many of these accidents have occurred in the Highland region and also how many were fatal.

8. Can you give the figures for the traffic flow/number of vehicles on the A9 per year for the last five years.

To which you clarified the 'Highland region' locations as;

A9 from Scrabster to the junction with Foss Road in Pitlochry and the A82 from Tyndrum to the A82 Longman roundabout Inverness.

You also clarified the dates requested as;

Figures beginning from April 2012.

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.

I have numbered your request and my response for ease of reference.

In relation to points 1 - 3 and 5 – 7, please refer to Annex A.

Please note the following potential reasons for an accident not appearing on our system:

• Transport Scotland only holds accident information which is provided to us by Police Scotland.

• Transport Scotland does not hold information relating to damage only accidents (i.e. not involving an injury).

• Transport Scotland only holds accident information for the trunk road network.

• The accident information Transport Scotland hold is subject to change based on late returns from Police Scotland, who are responsible for recording details of injury accidents.

In relation to points 4 and 8, please refer to Annex B which contains the annual average daily flow of traffic per year.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses

foi-17-01796 Annex A - Accident Data A82 and A9.xlsx

File type

Excel document

File size

24.0 kB

foi-17-01796 Annex B - Traffic Flow - Spreadsheet A82 and A9.xlsx

File type

Excel document

File size

57.7 kB