Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will take steps to amend road accident investigation procedures to enable more data to be gathered about accidents on roads.

The police regularly supply statistical information about personal-injury road accidents to the Department. This is commonly called the Stats19 dataset.

The Department for Transport and the Home Office have recently developed a new Stats19 data collection for police forces called CRASH (Collision Reporting and Sharing). This has been adopted by 24 police forces in England. CRASH adds some new fields which provide additional information on the incident as well as speeding up the delivery of data. These fields will provide new information which the Department will use to monitor and improve road safety.

The Department routinely carries out reviews of the Stats19 variables. These reviews ensure that the most important variables are being collected and allow Stats19 to reflect any changes in any relevant aspects of driving – for instance, considering what will be required when autonomous vehicles are using the roads. The reviews involve police forces and users of the Stats19 data.

As well as considering what new pieces of information will be required, the reviews also need to consider the burden placed on police forces in collecting these data. All concerned parties recognise that over-burdening police forces with excessive data collection demands will result in a reduction in data quality. The reviews, therefore, balance the data needs of users with resource availability in police forces.

It is likely that the next review will take place in 2017.