Transport Scotland - Casualties on Scottish roads statistics: FOI release

Information requested

I would be grateful if you could provide me with the following Scottish road casualties data in electronic Excel format please.

For each year in the 10 year period 2015-2024, and for Fatal and Serious injury collisions which involved a Pedal Cyclist or a Pedestrian, please provide data for the numbers of each Contributory Factor assigned to:

• Pedal cyclists; and
• All other vehicles involved (i.e. non-pedal cycles)
• Pedestrians; and
• All vehicles involved

For each year in the 10 year period 2015-2024, and for Fatal and Serious injury collisions which involved a Pedal Cyclist or a Pedestrian, please provide data for the numbers of each Contributory Factor assigned to:

• Pedal cyclists; and
• Heavy Goods Vehicles
• Light Goods Vehicles
• Bus/Coach
• Taxis
• Pedestrians; and
• Heavy Goods Vehicles
• Light Goods Vehicles
• Bus/Coach
• Taxis

Response

We have provided the requested analysis of contributory factors with one exemption applied as per below. Please find the analysis in the attached excel file.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested for pedal cycle collisions because it is personal data of a third party. This applies to circumstances where the analysis requested would be based on only one collision in a given year. In such circumstances those involved in the collision, or otherwise with knowledge of it, would be able to identify the contributory factors assigned to both the cyclist and the other vehicle driver. Disclosing this information would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have marked these columns as 'NA’ in the attached file.

I know that you have previously had correspondence with my colleague regarding contributory factors, their replacement by road safety factors, and conversions between the two. Since that correspondence, our understanding of the relationship between road safety factors and contributory factors has developed, informed by analysis undertaken by the Department for Transport. This analysis indicates that details for collisions which were natively recorded as contributory factors are not comparable with those recorded as road safety factors, even once  ‘converted’.

We have interpreted your request as relating to contributory factors (i.e. the analysis we have provided does not include road safety factors). This interpretation maximises the internal consistency of the data provided. Contributory factors were used in recording all collisions up to and including 2022, the large majority of collisions in 2023, and around half of collisions in 2024.

If you would also like to receive data relating to road safety factors, we can provide this. However, it is not now recommended that this data is combined with data originally collected as contributory factors for analytical purposes.

Lastly, the analysis we have provided is based on the data as it was recorded. There are some contributory factors that were assigned to participants in a collision that do not seem to be directly applicable to those participants. For example, in one collision the contributory factor ‘vision affected by vehicle blind spot’ has been assigned to a pedestrian. Some judgement may therefore be required.

Further information on the collection of contributory factor information can be found in the STATS20 guidance document available on the Department for Transport website.

About FOI

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

FOI 202600517928 - Information Released - Excel File

File type

Excel document

File size

81.3 kB