Road debris reports and incidents: EIR release

Information requested

• The total number of reports of debris on roads managed by Transport Scotland in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
• The total number of incidents / accidents caused by objects falling from vehicles in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
• The ten roads which had the most reports of debris in 2022.
• The five most common types of debris by category (with number of incidents per category) in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

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

I have kept your questions separate for ease of reference.

The total number of reports of debris on roads managed by Transport Scotland in 2020, 2021, and 2022

Please see below table showing the number of reports of debris

	2020	2021	2022
Number of reports	6288	7899	5291

The total number of incidents / accidents caused by objects falling from vehicles in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. This is because this is not a classification/category when recording reasons for accidents/incidents.

The ten roads which had the most reports of debris in 2022.

In 2022 the ten roads with the most debris reported were (in decreasing order) - M8, M9, M90, A9, A720, A1, M876, M80, A92 and A82.

This includes items/debris/animals which are not actually on the carriageway but close to it. i.e on the verge. We are unable to specify items only on the ‘road’. As we have Trunk Road Inspection Support Services (TRISS) on the busier routes, the figures for these roads will be much higher than the routes with no TRISS support.

The five most common types of debris by category (with number of incidents per category) in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. This is because this is information not recorded.

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.