MAST online updated

12 October 2017

MAST Online has now been updated with full STATS19 data for 2016. 

Delays in delivery

The DfT’s announcement of the headline casualty statistics for 2016 was delayed “due to unavailability of data from the Metropolitan Police Service”. Apparently, the Met were unable to provide a final validated dataset until 7 September 2016, over four months later than DfT’s deadline. This unprecedented delay, given the status of STATS19 KSI casualty figures as National Statistics, inevitably resulted in a significant holdup in delivery of data to RSA.

Changes in reporting

In its annual report, DfT state that “The 2016 serious injuries figures have been substantially affected … by changes in systems for severity reporting by about half of all police forces”. This refers to incremental adoption of the CRASH collision reporting system, which among many other refinements records injuries with a far greater degree of precision than other methods. DfT’s preliminary conclusion is that this change “has added between five and fifteen percent to the Great Britain total for serious injuries” in 2016.

In RSA’s opinion the change to CRASH will be highly beneficial in the long term, resulting in better quality data reported in a more efficient manner. However, in the short to medium term there is potential for confusion in interpreting casualty statistics, especially when compared to previous years.

To access the DfT's Reported Road Casualty Data 2016 please click here.