Importance EU compatibility of road safety data

At present the numbers of non-fatal accidents and of people seriously and slightly injured cannot be compared in different EU Member States. The result of the lack of comparability of counts of non-fatal casualties is that international comparisons of road safety focus entirely on fatal accidents and casualties. Although theses comparisons are useful, they form only a small minority of the accident and casualty totals and in that sense present a limited view on the problem. In view of this it is desirable to extend these comparisons to include the full range of injury severities.

The SafetyNet project strives to expand the scope of CARE-based road accident analyses by enabling meaningful comparisons of non-fatal accidents and casualties. This will allow consideration of road safety to extend beyond the current focus on fatal accidents and casualties. Moreover, the increased size of the data sets available for analysis will reduce the effects of chance, so that more detailed analyses can be carried out.