Motorcycles: Accidents

(asked on 15th January 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to page 6 of his Department's publication entitled Facts on motorcyclists casualties, published in June 2015, what the proportion is of (a) car drivers and (b) light van drivers whose contributory factor of their accidents involving motorcyclists was their failure to look properly in each year from 2013 to 2017.


Answered by
Jesse Norman Portrait
Jesse Norman
This question was answered on 21st January 2019

The publication entitled Facts on Motorcyclist Casualties published in June 2015 provided information on the proportion of cars and light goods vehicles allocated the contributory factor ‘failed to look properly’ in accidents involving a motorcyclist casualty where a police officer attended the scene of the accident. These proportions for each year from 2013 to 2017 are presented in the table below.

Since police officers do not always record a contributory factor when they attend a scene, we have also included data showing the proportion for those accidents where a contributory factor was recorded. This is the more commonly presented approach for contributory factors.

Proportion of vehicles involved in accidents with at least one motorcycle casualty and police officer attending where 'Failed to look properly' contributory factor allocated, Great Britain, 2013 to 2017

As a proportion of all vehicles in these accidents

As a proportion of all vehicles in these accidents where at least one contributory factor allocated

Year

Vehicle

2013

Car

47.4%

49.0%

Light goods vehicle

46.8%

47.5%

2014

Car

47.8%

49.2%

Light goods vehicle

48.8%

49.6%

2015

Car

48.6%

50.3%

Light goods vehicle

45.9%

47.3%

2016

Car

45.7%

47.0%

Light goods vehicle

46.2%

47.3%

2017

Car

40.0%

40.9%

Light goods vehicle

37.7%

38.4%

Source: DfT STATS19

Using this approach, the proportion of cars and light goods vehicles allocated the contributory factor ‘failed to look properly’ for the years 2009 to 2013 in the 2015 report would have been 48.1% and 48.2% respectively.

Contributory factors assigned by police officers do not assign blame for the accident to any specific road user, however they do provide some insight into why and how road accidents occur. They give an indication of which factors the attending officer thought contributed to the accident. Officers do not need to carry out a full investigation of the incident before allocating contributory factors; they usually use professional judgement about what they can see at the scene.

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