Looking at the number of vehicles involved in reported road accidents in Great Britain in 2020, some 11,208 cars were involved in accidents while commuting, while 1,520 accidents were recorded for cars taking pupils to school.

A share of 38 percent of all road accidents in Great Britain were caused by the driver or rider not looking properly. Following, other important causes of road accidents were failure to judge other person's path or speed and careless driving. However, exceeding speed limit was the leading factor to only seven percent of the road accidents in Great Britain.

Malta had the lowest rate of road fatalities in the European Union in 2021. That year, 1,000 more people lost their lives on roads in the European Union, up by about five percent between 2020 and 2021.

Around 600 car occupants were killed on British roads in 2020. Between 2012 and 2020, the highest number of deaths was recorded in 2016 with more than 800 fatalities, while 2020 marked the least deadly year.

In 2020, there were more children and young people who were slightly injured as pedestrians in road accidents than those aged 60 and over in Great Britain. However, at 22 deaths for the same year, there were significantly fewer child pedestrian fatalities: there were comparatively 180 and 144 deaths reported among the 16-to-59 and over-60s age groups, respectively.

In 2020, a total of 618 car occupants were killed in road traffic-related accidents in Great Britain, down from around 736 car occupant fatalities in 2019. However, 2020 recorded a higher number of cyclists fatalities.

This database that can be used for macro-level analysis of road accidents on interurban roads in Europe. Through the variables it contains, road accidents can be explained using variables related to economic resources invested in roads, traffic, road network, socioeconomic characteristics, legislative measures and meteorology. This repository contains the data used for the analysis carried out in the papers:

1. Calvo-Poyo F., Navarro-Moreno J., de Oña J. (2020) Road Investment and Traffic Safety: An International Study. Sustainability 12:6332. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12166332

2. Navarro-Moreno J., Calvo-Poyo F., de Oña J. (2022) Influence of road investment and maintenance expenses on injured traffic crashes in European roads. Int J Sustain Transp 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/15568318.2022.2082344

3. Navarro-Moreno, J., Calvo-Poyo, F., de Oña, J. (2022) Investment in roads and traffic safety: linked to economic development? A European comparison. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22567

The file with the database is available in excel.

DATA SOURCES

The database presents data from 1998 up to 2016 from 20 european countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. Crash data were obtained from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) [2], which offers enough level of disaggregation between crashes occurring inside versus outside built-up areas.

With reference to the data on economic resources invested in roadways, deserving mention –given its extensive coverage—is the database of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), managed by the International Transport Forum (ITF) [1], which collects data on investment in the construction of roads and expenditure on their maintenance, following the definitions of the United Nations System of National Accounts (2008 SNA). Despite some data gaps, the time series present consistency from one country to the next. Moreover, to confirm the consistency and complete missing data, diverse additional sources, mainly the national Transport Ministries of the respective countries were consulted. All the monetary values were converted to constant prices in 2015 using the OECD price index.

To obtain the rest of the variables in the database, as well as to ensure consistency in the time series and complete missing data, the following national and international sources were consulted:

• Eurostat [3]
• Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE). European Union [4]
• The World Bank [5]
• World Health Organization (WHO) [6]
• European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) [7]
• European Road Safety Observatory (ERSO) [8]
• European Climatic Energy Mixes (ECEM) of the Copernicus Climate Change [9]
• EU BestPoint-Project [10]
• Ministerstvo dopravy, República Checa [11]
• Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur, Alemania [12]
• Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat, Países Bajos [13]
• National Statistics Office, Malta [14]
• Ministério da Economia e Transição Digital, Portugal [15]
• Ministerio de Fomento, España [16]
• Trafikverket, Suecia [17]
• Ministère de l’environnement de l’énergie et de la mer, Francia [18]
• Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti, Italia [19–25]
• Statistisk sentralbyrå, Noruega [26-29]
• Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Portugal [30]
• Infraestruturas de Portugal S.A., Portugal [31–35]
• Road Safety Authority (RSA), Ireland [36]

DATA BASE DESCRIPTION

The database was made trying to combine the longest possible time period with the maximum number of countries with complete dataset (some countries like Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta and Norway were eliminated from the definitive dataset owing to a lack of data or breaks in the time series of records). Taking into account the above, the definitive database is made up of 19 variables, and contains data from 20 countries during the period between 1998 and 2016. Table 1 shows the coding of the variables, as well as their definition and unit of measure.

Table. Database metadata

| Code | Variable and unit | | fatal_pc_km | Fatalities per billion passenger-km | | fatal_mIn | Fatalities per million inhabitants | | accid_adj_pc_km | Accidents per billion passenger-km | | p_km | Billions of passenger-km | | croad_inv_km | Investment in roads construction per kilometer, €/km (2015 constant prices) | | croad_maint_km | Expenditure on roads maintenance per kilometer €/km (2015 constant prices) | | prop_motorwa | Proportion of motorways over the total road network (%) | | populat | Population, in millions of inhabitants | | unemploy | Unemployment rate (%) | | petro_car | Consumption of gasolina and petrol derivatives (tons), per tourism | | alcohol | Alcohol consumption, in liters per capita (age > 15) | | mot_index | Motorization index, in cars per 1,000 inhabitants | | den_populat | Population density, inhabitants/km2 | | cgdp | Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in € (2015 constant prices) | | cgdp_cap | GDP per capita, in € (2015 constant prices) | | precipit | Average depth of rain water during a year (mm) | | prop_elder | Proportion of people over 65 years (%) | | dps | Demerit Point System, dummy variable (0: no; 1: yes) | | freight | Freight transport, in billions of ton-km |

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This database was carried out in the framework of the project “Inversión en carreteras y seguridad vial: un análisis internacional (INCASE)”, financed by: FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades–Agencia Estatal de Investigación/Proyecto RTI2018-101770-B-I00, within Spain´s National Program of R+D+i Oriented to Societal Challenges.

Moreover, the authors would like to express their gratitude to the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda of Spain (MITMA), and the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure of Germany (BMVI) for providing data for this study.

REFERENCES

1. International Transport Forum OECD iLibrary | Transport infrastructure investment and maintenance.

2. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe UNECE Statistical Database Available online: https://w3.unece.org/PXWeb2015/pxweb/en/STAT/STAT_40-TRTRANS/?rxid=18ad5d0d-bd5e-476f-ab7c-40545e802eeb (accessed on Apr 28, 2020).

3. European Commission Database - Eurostat Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database (accessed on Apr 28, 2021).

4. Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport. European Commission EU Transport in figures - Statistical Pocketbooks Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/facts-fundings/statistics_en (accessed on Apr 28, 2021).

5. World Bank Group World Bank Open Data | Data Available online: https://data.worldbank.org/ (accessed on Apr 30, 2021).

6. World Health Organization (WHO) WHO Global Information System on Alcohol and Health Available online: https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.GISAH?lang=en (accessed on Apr 29, 2021).

7. European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) Traffic Law Enforcement across the EU - Tackling the Three Main Killers on Europe’s Roads; Brussels, Belgium, 2011;

8. Copernicus Climate Change Service Climate data for the European energy sector from 1979 to 2016 derived from ERA-Interim Available online: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/sis-european-energy-sector?tab=overview (accessed on Apr 29, 2021).

9. Klipp, S.; Eichel, K.; Billard, A.; Chalika, E.; Loranc, M.D.; Farrugia, B.; Jost, G.; Møller, M.; Munnelly, M.; Kallberg, V.P.; et al. European Demerit Point Systems : Overview of their main features and expert opinions. EU BestPoint-Project 2011, 1–237.

10. Ministerstvo dopravy Serie: Ročenka dopravy; Ročenka dopravy; Centrum dopravního výzkumu: Prague, Czech Republic;

11. Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur Verkehr in Zahlen 2003/2004; Hamburg, Germany, 2004; ISBN 3871542946.

12. Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur Verkehr in Zahlen 2018/2019. In Verkehrsdynamik; Flensburg, Germany, 2018 ISBN 9783000612947.

13. Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat Rijksjaarverslag 2018 a Infrastructuurfonds; The Hague, Netherlands, 2019; ISBN 0921-7371.

14. Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu Rijksjaarverslag 2014 a Infrastructuurfonds; The Hague, Netherlands, 2015; ISBN 0921- 7371.

15. Ministério da Economia e Transição Digital Base de Dados de Infraestruturas - GEE Available online: https://www.gee.gov.pt/pt/publicacoes/indicadores-e-estatisticas/base-de-dados-de-infraestruturas (accessed on Apr 29, 2021).

16. Ministerio de Fomento. Dirección General de Programación Económica y Presupuestos. Subdirección General de Estudios Económicos y Estadísticas Serie: Anuario estadístico; NIPO 161-13-171-0; Centro de Publicaciones. Secretaría General Técnica. Ministerio de Fomento: Madrid, Spain;

17. Trafikverket The Swedish Transport Administration Annual report: 2017; 2018; ISBN 978-91-7725-272-6.

18. Ministère de l’Équipement, du T. et de la M. Mémento de statistiques des transports 2003; Ministère de l’environnement de l’énergie et de la mer, 2005;

19. Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti Conto Nazionale delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti Anno 2000; Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato: Roma, Italy, 2001;

20. Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti Conto nazionale dei trasporti 1999. 2000.

21. Generale, D.; Informativi, S. delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti Anno 2004.

22. Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti *Conto Nazionale delle Infrastrutture e dei

The PSNI produces statistics on injury road traffic collisions (RTCs) that are reported to the Police. These statistics are collected in accordance with the STATS20 guidance from the Department for Transport (DfT) and are comparable with the statistics in Great Britain (GB). Damage only collisions or those collisions resulting in no injuries are excluded from these statistics.

In 2020 UK drivers who had drunk before driving and were thus impaired by alcohol were the greatest cause of fatal, serious, and slight accidents among all accidents caused by impairment or distractions, with 102 fatalities and 2,578 slight accidents.

The total human costs for serious casualties in road accidents surpassed 3.5 billion British pounds in the year 2020. Similarly, in the fatal- and slight-casualty-related categories, human costs remained the highest, coming in at 1.916 and 1.145 billion British pounds respectively.

This publication can be accessed here

Fatal accidents and casualties were significantly more expensive than either serious or slight accidents in the United Kingdom in 2020. That year, on average, a fatal accident resulted in over almost two million British pounds of prevention costs. The cost of slight accidents was substantially lower, but not insignificant, reaching some 16,700 Great British pounds.

Driver’s error most common factor

The most common cause for any type of accident was a driver’s reaction error, with incidents caused by actions such as sudden braking or swerving, where a police officer had to attend a scene. Of these, a driver or rider failing to look properly was the most frequent cause of an accident.

Road accident total costs increase in 2018

Total prevention costs from reported road accidents amounted to 16.5 billion British pounds in 2018. Between 2010 and 2018, figures had grown by approximately nine percent, while the lowest figure had been recorded in 2013. The number of car drivers involved in road accidents in Great Britain is on the decline.

In 2020, there were more male than female casualties reported among every age group in Great Britain. At 1,914 casualties, there were significantly more male pedestrians killed between 25 and 59 years of age in Great Britain than female pedestrians.

Data on the number of road traffic fatalities involving police on emergency response in England and Wales from 2004/05 to 2019/20 shows that in 2013/14, 2014/15 and 2016/17 there were no such emergency response related incidents. By 2019/20 there were in total 3 road traffic fatalities.