Accredited official statistics

User feedback request: proposed changes to road casualty statistics

Published 25 September 2025

This document outlines planned changes to future publications of road casualty data and statistics from the next publication (November 2025 onwards). We would be grateful to hear any feedback on the changes, particularly if they might impact your work adversely.

Feedback can be provided via our short user survey or be emailing any comments to the road safety statistics team at roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk.

Local authority level figures

Currently, we present figures for local authorities based on the boundaries existing during the year of the collision occurring. This means that where there are boundary changes (for example, Northamptonshire splitting into West and North Northamptonshire), a time series of historic data does not exist. We intend to change to reporting based on the boundaries existing for the latest year of data, as we think that this would provide more meaningful trends over time. Figures for years prior to an authority existing can be coded from the collision location (with a very small amount of missing data).

Using this approach, for example, the data table RAS0403 would, for example, show a full time series for North and West Northamptonshire, and not include the former Northamptonshire area.

Question 1: Does the proposed approach to report figures for current local authorities (and other areas) based on current boundaries cause any difficulties for your work? If so, please provide brief details

Adjusted and unadjusted KSI figures

Following the introduction of injury-based reporting by some police forces, we have developed a method of adjusting non-fatal casualties to provide a consistent time series, as if all forces were using the injury-based method. We currently show both adjusted and unadjusted figures within the data tables. However, we intend to no longer show the unadjusted figures, except where figures relate to individual police force or local authority areas. This is to ensure it is clear that the adjusted figures are recommended for most uses at national or regional level. Unadjusted data will still be made available as part of the open data files we provide.

Question 2: Does the proposed approach to no longer routinely report on unadjusted figures cause you any difficulties for your work? If so, please provide brief details.

Casualty rates

Where we present casualty rates to compare casualty numbers with traffic, currently these are shown both on the basis of casualties per billion miles, and per billion kilometres. In future, we intend to show only the rates per mile within the statistics, in line with what is already done for our annual reports. Rates per kilometre can be easily calculated by applying conversion factors.

Question 3: Does the proposed approach to only report rates on a per mile (and not per kilometre) basis difficulties for your work? If so, please provide brief details.

Road safety factors

As a result of the latest review of the STATS19 road collision data collection system, the previous contributory factors have been replaced with a new system of road safety factors, with details of this change available in our guide to road safety factors. Currently, police forces are recording the data in different ways, and as a result we have reflected this in the presentation of the statistics, including withdrawing some of the data tables (RAS0704 to RAS0706, which showed sub-national breakdowns of the figures).

We intend to reconsider the published data once more forces have adopted the new road safety factors.

Question 4: Does the proposed change to the presentation of road safety factors cause any problems in your work? If so, please provide brief details, and any suggestions for alternative approaches.

Open data

Alongside the publication of the 2024 statistics, we have made some changes to the location and format of the open data files which provide users with access to the underlying raw data, including:

• addition of new variables associated with the new data specification
• consequently, renaming some variables that reflect the previous specification data
• moving the data from data.gov.uk to the GOV.UK website, which is easier for us to maintain

Question 5: Do these changes to the format and location create any issues for your work? 

Question 6: Do you have any suggestions for further changes to the open data files that would be useful to see?

Any other feedback

We also welcome any other feedback on these statistics. For example:

• does the timeliness and frequency of the current publications meet your needs?

• are there additional topics or analyses you would like to see included in the annual publication?

• are there any additional breakdowns which could be included in the published data tables?

Question 7. Do you have any other comments or feedback on the department’s road casualty statistics more generally?

Contact us

Road safety statistics

Email roadacc.stats@dft.gov.uk