Road casualty trends

Road-traffic casualty rates in Glasgow have fallen considerably in recent years, despite an increase in the volume of traffic. The graph below shows the trend in Glasgow over approximately the last 15 years.

Casualty rates from all road-traffic accidents have fallen by 57% between 1997-2001 and 2015-2019. The rate of casualties being killed or seriously injured has fallen by 64% in the same period.

For more information on traffic volume, see the traffic volume section of the website.

Notes

The figures shown are based on the "Stats 19" statistical returns made by police forces, which cover all accidents in which a vehicle is involved that occur on roads (including footways) and result in personal injury, if they become known to the police. There could be many non-fatal injury accidents which are not reported by the public to the police, and are therefore not counted in these statistics.

Further statistics on road-traffic accidents and casualties can be accessed from Transport Scotland publications.

Further reading:

In February 2020, the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and Cycling Scotland jointly published Cycling in Scotland: a review of cycling casualties, near misses and under-reporting. This report combines analysis of reported cycling casualties in Scotland over a 23-year period from 1995-2018, alongside a literature review of under-reporting and near misses. 

The main findings were: the rate of serious injuries and fatalities in Scotland increased by 18% between 2004-2018; the majority (84%) of cycling casualties involved a collision with a car; one-in-ten cycling casualties were victims of hit-and-run incidents, and pedestrian injuries caused by a collision with a cyclist were rare.