ABSTRACT
The first official road accident statistics for Great Britain were collected in 1909, in response to contemporary concerns about the increase in motorised traffic. This chapter reviews the development of British road accident statistics over the intervening years, and summarizes the major legislative changes that have influenced this development. The level of underreporting appears to be stable in this country from year to year, although some foreign accident reporting systems have experienced significant fluctuations caused, for example, by changed police reporting procedures or local government reorganisation. The question of attribution or ‘accident causation’ is now recognised as being rather more complex, but the fatal accident data shown provide a fascinating insight into the changing pattern of road transport during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The number of seriously injured has fallen in line with the number of deaths, so someone injured in a road accident today is, on average, less severely injured than someone injured thirty years ago.
