Road Fatalities and Injury Collision Statistics

Data Collection Type
National data collections of health and social care in Ireland
Organisation

The Road Safety Authority, Garda National Roads Policing Bureau   

Year established

Fatality figures are available since 1959.
1996 — more complete data collection commenced under the remit of the National Roads Authority, which was established in 1993.
2006 — the Road Safety Authority was granted a statutory remit to manage the national data collection.

Statement of purpose

To collect, collate, analyse and disseminate the road injury collision data, with the aim of creating and maintaining an accurate and timely dataset of road injury collisions.  

Coverage

National — the number of road users killed and injured in Ireland and other summary statistics of these collisions.

Description

Principal source of data and information on fatal and injury collisions on Irish roads.

Data content

Data includes location with coordinates, date and time, road and weather conditions, vehicle and injury information in fatal and injury collisions. 

Data providers

National Roads Policing Bureau, An Garda Síochána (AGS).

Data collection methodology

There is a daily transfer of data electronically to the RSA; these records are individually assessed and validated. This system was introduced from 1st January 2014 and saw a move away from the paper-based form (CT68) previously sent to the RSA by AGS.  

Data dictionary

Not available

Clinical coding scheme

Not in use

Size of national collection

Between 5,500–6,000 records created on average annually (fatal and injury collision).

Publication frequency

On RSA website: 
1. Annual RSA Road Collision Facts Reports.
2. Provisional review of fatalities at the end of the each year.
3. Ad-hoc reports and analysis of collision data released on an ongoing basis.

On Central Statistics Office (CSO) website: 
1. Annual updates available on Statbank through the Other Public Sector Databases page.
2. Annual Transport Omnibus Report.

On Garda website: 
1. ‘Traffic Statistics’ available updated regularly.
2. Summary data for the year up to the current date. 
3. Monthly comparisons available from 2008 to 2013. 
4. Archived Road Collision Statistics from 1961 to 2007.
 

Accessing data

Report on ‘Traffic Statistics’ can be accessed on Garda.ie website. 
Annual RSA Road Collision Facts Reports on RSA.ie website.  
Annual CSO release of data through Statbank. 
In addition, the historic data file of injury collisions can be requested for use by researchers directly from the RSA.

Open data portal access

No

Email contact
Telephone contact
Other comments

The change in 2014 will help to offer improvements to the way the data is reported and to increase the data available.