A9 - accidents at Tain: EIR Release

Information requested

How many accidents have occurred at the A9 Tain between and including the B9174 at Lidl in Tain and up to and including the B9174 A9 Asda junction at Tain every year for the past five years.

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.

Response to your request

1. Transport Scotland only holds information relating to personal injury accidents. Transport Scotland does not hold information relating to damage only accidents (i.e. not involving an injury). The information available is held within the table below 

Year	Number of personal injury accidents
2019	4
2020	4
2021	3
2022	0
2023	2
2024 (up to 5 June)	0

Source: Transport Scotland Accident Manager Database (AMPS) Notes:
Statistics for Police Scotland
Date Period: 01/01/2019 to 5/6/2024 Date Extracted: 08/08/2024
Please note that the information provided is based on the current figures available. The following are 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 holds is subject to change. E.g. we receive late returns from Police Scotland, who are responsible for recording details of injury accidents.
• Annual Scottish accident figures are published by Transport Scotland on a yearly basis and can be found by entering Reported Road Casualties Scotland into your search engine.
• From summer 2019, Police Scotland introduced a new system for recording traffic collisions. Due to improved recording and categorisation processes, it is expected that there will be an increase in the number of casualties and accidents on Scottish roads that are classified as serious. This increase would not reflect an actual change in the severity of accidents occurring on Scottish roads, but would instead reflect more accurate recording.
• Statisticians within the Department for Transport have devised a method for adjusting the road casualty figures to ensure that they can be compared over time on a consistent basis. Transport Scotland’s Key Reported Road Casualties and Reported Road Casualties statistics publications will present both adjusted and unadjusted figures.

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.