Transport Scotland information on road accident cluster sites: EIR release

Information requested

Information on accident cluster sites in the last 10 years for the following road types:

• A Roads
• B Roads
• C Roads
• Unclassified roads
• T Junctions (signalised and non-signalised)
• Roundabouts
• Crossroads
• Any miscellaneous data

Within each road type I would be looking to obtain the data listed below:

• How many accidents have occurred
• Accident severity
• How many casualties
• 85th%ile speed of road (from surveys) and any historic issues with speeding

I would be grateful that as a minimum, data can be provided for 1 or 2 sites for each road type.

Response

It was agreed that we would provide accident data and cluster analysis on a number of routes including four single carriageway A roads, the A720 city bypass and part of the M8. We also agreed to provide speed data showing the average and 85th%ile speeds from a number of traffic counters located on these routes.

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.

Please see annexes A-D for a copy of the information you requested. The data provided in Annexes A-C is personal injury accident data for the three year period 2017 to 2019 for each route and the cluster analysis is based on running Transport Scotland's Moving Cursor Programme over these routes to identify sites with 3 or more accidents within a 100 metres radius within the 3 year period. Annex D contains speed data from 57 counter sites across the routes.

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above. If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide.

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.