Injuries: road traffic injuries
The annual Transport Scotland publication, Reported Road Casualties Scotland, presents statistics about the circumstances of personal injury due to road accidents in Scotland that were reported by the police. Injury accidents not reported by the public to the police do not appear in these statistics. Details of all road accidents and casualties by severity for the years 1950 to 2020 are available in Tables 1-2.
The Public Health Scotland publication Unintentional Injuries includes information on the number of emergency admissions to acute hospitals in Scotland as a result of a road traffic accidents, with separate figures reported for adults and children.
Key points:
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In 2021, Scotland’s provisional overall road death rate of 26 per one million population was the ninth lowest of the 40 countries surveyed (Transport Scotland).
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The total number of road casualties has been reducing across the last decade. There were 5,023 road casualties reported in 2021, 60% lower than in 2012, and the second lowest total since records began in 1950.
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COVID-19 restrictions in Scotland resulted in a 15% reduction in the road traffic accident admission rate between 2019/20 and 2021/22, as fewer people were travelling.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
