Meaning underreporting for road safety analysis

At present the numbers of non-fatal accidents and of people seriously and slightly injured cannot be compared in different Member States because there is large underreporting for these data in nearly all EU countries. In addition, the definition of injury severity differs among member states, so that a casualty which would be recorded in one country might not be recorded in another, while a casualty which might be recorded as ‘serious’ in one country might be recorded as ‘slight’ in another. 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. These form only a small minority of the accident and casualty totals. It is advisable to correct for underreporting and differences in injury recording so that EU-road safety comparisons include the full range of injury severities. Currently, researchers of the SafetyNet project are working towards that aim.