Post 2010 Casualty Forecasting

This report presents the outcome of research that has been carried out by the Transport Research Laboratory to assist the Department for Transport to prepare for the post-2010 casualty reduction strategy. It shows how the numbers of casualties in 2020 and 2030 have been forecast, taking account of likely future developments in travel by road and in road safety, and presents the forecasts that have been prepared.

The work has built on the methodology that was developed in the late 1990s to prepare the post-2000 casualty reduction target, as described in the report TRL 382 (Broughton et al, 2000). The TRL 382 methodology provides a series of statistical models that forecast the number of casualties in 2010 under a number of assumptions about the changes in road travel until 2010 and the assumed effects of new road safety measures that might be introduced. An important feature of the methodology is that it can incorporate the effects of existing road safety measures where they can be estimated reliably.

The forecasting models have been updated annually, and the results have shown that the forecasting methodology is broadly reliable. Consequently, the new forecasts presented in this report have followed the same approach, with some minor modifications. The report presents forecasts of the number of people who will be killed and seriously injured in 2020 and 2030. It also uses a slightly simpler approach to forecast the number of children who will be killed and seriously injured in these years.

Few road safety measures affect all road user groups equally, so five groups of road user are treated separately in the modelling: car occupants, motorcyclists, pedestrians, pedal cyclists and others. ‘Transport scenarios’ are defined to allow for uncertainty over the future level of road use by the various transport modes. Each scenario consists of predictions for the target year of the levels of traffic (all motor vehicles, cars, motorcycles) and of pedestrian and pedal cycle activity. These scenarios are largely based on official forecasts.