Organisation
PACTS
Amount awarded
£16,750
Completed
2023
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre
19 February 2024
This study found that the official data of e-scooter casualties under-report numbers of e-scooter casualties recorded by hospitals. Just over a quarter of those who were most seriously injured were recorded by the police. Fewer than 10% of casualties with any level of injury presenting to emergency departments were recorded. Patients presenting with injuries to the head, face and spine were more likely to be recorded by the police than other injuries, regardless of the severity of their injuries.
Across the three datasets used in this study nearly 10% of casualties were under the age of seventeen.
Improvements in the recording of e-scooter casualties will involve input from various different stakeholders. Within 2021 free-text was relied on for identifying e-scooter involvement in both police and hospital data. Updated police recording systems will be launched later this year, through CRaSH (Collision Reporting and Sharing), and in 2024, in STATS19. There needs to be increased public awareness that e-scooters are motor vehicles and therefore that collisions should be reported to the police.
Within hospital data, means of unique labelling through free text could be agreed. Successful methods have been employed by the Trauma Audit Research Network (TARN).
Casualty data from commercially run operations are important for informing the broader understanding of safety. However, the value of the data is dependent on methods of collecting being consistent, using methods already established to build other datasets. This is not currently the case.
PACTS recommends the DfT should:
- Increase the opportunities for casualty data to be collected
- Improve the means of recording e-scooter casualties using the rental e-scooter schemes
- Require all injury collisions, regardless of whether or not they include a third party, be reported to the police
Visit The Road Safety Trust website to read the full report (phase two):
https://www.roadsafetytrust.org.uk/small-grants-awarded/parliamentary-advisory-council-for-transport-safety-pacts