Road Fatalities and Injury Collision Statistics

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

Road Safety Authority (RSA) have overall responsibility for the national collection in conjunction with the Garda National Roads Policing Bureau. Under Section 8 of the Road Safety Authority Act 2006, the RSA has a statutory obligation to collect, compile, prepare, publish or distribute information and statistics relating to road safety.

Year established

Fatality figures are available since 1959 but a more complete version of the data has been kept since 1996. The collection was managed by, the then, National Roads Authority and in 2006 the collection transferred to the Road Safety Authority who were granted a statutory remit to manage it.

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.

While data is collected and collated for all incident types, including material damage cases, only records relating to injury collisions (fatal, serious, and minor) are analysed and disseminated. From this perspective, injury incidents are ‘in scope’ and material damage incidents are ‘out of scope’.

Coverage (geographical and temporal)

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

There is a daily transfer of data electronically to the RSA.

Description/Summary

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

Data users

A range of national and international stakeholders, including (but not limited to):
National: Department of Transport (DoT), Local Government Management Agency (LGMA), Local Authorities, Researchers, engineering companies.

International: EC CARE Group, European Transport Safety Council (ETSC), International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD).

Data content

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

Data dictionary

Internal documentation, including data dictionaries, is available, although this has not been published online. When disseminating raw data to stakeholders, a data dictionary, along with other supporting documentation (such as the terms and conditions of use), is provided for their reference.

National-level identifier variables

PPSN and IHI are not included in this dataset.

The data variables cover three main elements of an incident: the location of the collision, the persons involved in the collision, and the vehicles involved in the collision.

Equity stratifiers

Gender.

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.

Clinical coding scheme

Not available.

Size of national collection

Not in use.

Publication frequency

Data is published on an ongoing and regular basis throughout the year.

Accessing data

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 on-going basis.

On 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 - 2013.
4. Archived Road Collision Statistics - 1961 to 2007.

Open data portal access

No.

Email contact
Telephone contact
Other comments

Since the catalogue was last updated, internal validation processes have been further refined, leading to continuous improvements in data quality.