Road Casualty Reduction Reports

Road casualty reduction report 2023

Casualty and Collision data 2023

This report highlights road casualty and collision data for the calendar year 2023 along with details of forthcoming Road safety activities within Torbay.

The total number of collisions within Torbay for this year were 191 for all types. This is up from 168 for 2022.

Injury collisions per month 2023

The total numbers of casualties within Torbay for this year generally are also up from 2022 with 238 casualties compared to 229 from 2022.

Casualty numbers per month 2023

Regrettably 2023 still saw 2 recorded fatal casualties within Torbay compared to 3 in the previous year.

Serious injuries were up from 46 serious in 2022 to 50 in 2023 and slight injuries were 186 in 2023 compared to 180 in 2022.

The year shows that there was a general upward trend in the level of casualties by month from January to December from an average of 16 casualties per month to 24 per month, with October being the worst month for casualties at 31.

Collisions overall show that collisions have increased in all user types compared to 2022.

The notable changes are that serious collisions involving 2 wheeled motor vehicles have risen by 8 from last year to 15, and there was a reduction by 1 in fatals overall.

The categories which have shown an increase are ‘Vehicle drivers’, ‘motorcycle rider’ and ‘Pedestrians’. Vehicle drivers account for the most significant increase over 2023. All other categories are showing a reduction.

Vehicle passenger injuries have made a significant drop from 61 in 2022 to 38 in 2023.

Pedestrian casualties have fallen for serious injuries but risen for slight, injuries however regrettably there was still 1 recorded fatality in this category.

The fact that casualty numbers have increased overall shows a negative trend within Torbay and are not reducing in line with targets since 2010 or the more ambitious targets now set regionally by Vision Zero South West.

Planned expenditures for Road Safety Initiatives

The cluster site review for the Torbay area has raised some locations for consideration, however some of these have either already been addressed or will be addressed as part of ongoing schemes already in the planning and implementation stages.

The progress and future recommendations for road safety interventions will be outlined in the Road safety Initiatives Report 2024/25 to the Transport and Parking Working Party.

At a local level here in Torbay, we will also continue to report casualty figures each year as part of the Road Casualty Reduction Report and the figures for the following categories can be found displayed in section 3 of this report.

Casualty and collision data

A Casualty is a person killed or injured in a reported collision on a public road. Casualties are sub-divided into killed, seriously injured and slightly injured. The graphs below outline the road casualty and collision data for the years 2010 to 2023 compared against Torbay Council’s 2011-2021 targets and the newer regional targets set by Vision Zero South West (VZSW) (VZSW targets are to reduce all KSI’s by 50% by 2030 and to zero by 2040 ).

It has long been known that non-fatal (and particularly slight) casualties are underreported to the police and therefore this figure is likely to be an underestimate of the total.

The introduction of online self-reporting by the Metropolitan Police Service at the end of 2016 and a few other forces in 2018, is likely to have led to an increase in the number of non-fatal (and particularly slight) casualties reported in these forces and therefore impact the total for Great Britain.

Approximately half of English police forces adopted the CRASH (Collision Recording and Sharing) system for recording reported road traffic collisions at the end of 2015 or the first part of 2016, Devon and Cornwall Police switched in December 2015.

It is likely that the recording of injury severity is more accurate for forces using this new reporting system. Nationally this has had a large impact on the number of serious injuries recorded in 2016, compared with 2015. Some of these serious injuries may previously have been classified as slight injuries, which means that the 2016 and 2017 serious injury figures are not comparable to previous years.

CRASH is an injury-based severity reporting systems where the officer records the most severe injury for the casualty and the injuries are then automatically converted to a severity level from ‘slight’ to ‘serious’. Eliminating the uncertainty in determining severity that arises from the officer having to make their own judgement means that the new severity level data observed from these systems using injury-based methods are expected to be more accurate than the data from other systems.

Therefore, there has been a large increase in the number of serious injuries reported by the police after the introduction of CRASH in 2015/16 (+20%); as around half of police forces in England adopted this system, however the number of serious injuries recorded in 2017 has remained stable when compared to 2016.

Even though Torbay has such low base figures, it should be noted that this still showed an increase in our KSI figures of 15% between 2015 and 2016.

Fatalities

All fatalities 2011 to 2023

As reported, fatal casualties have fallen to 2 in this year. Any fatality on Torbay’s highway Network is one too many and we continue alongside VZSW to work towards an aspiration of having a 50% reduction of fatal by 2030 and zero fatalities by 2040.

However, it should be noted that these fatal collisions were generally due to the poor judgement of individuals rather than the road conditions or design and as such engineering interventions are unlikely to have prevented these collisions, however collision cluster sites and locations of concern will continue to be considered for improvement, where this is likely to support continued collision reductions.

Our KSIs for all ages remain high at 52 for 2023, a rise from the 49 of 2022.

It remains the Councils priority to identify sites where clusters of such incidents have occurred, with a view to engineering out any Highway issues or road user actions that may contribute to these and either reduce the level of severity or remove its risk altogether.

However, some issues such as excessive speeding or actions by road users under the influence or drink or drugs cannot be engineered for but may be achieved by means of Police enforcement.

Figure 6 Killed and seriously injured (K.S.I) (all ages)

KSIs for children 0-15 have dropped from the 9 of 2022 to 4 in 2023, though none were fatal.

Most of the injuries were due to the casualty entering the road without adequately looking or not adhering correctly to traffic signals.

Ideally education on road safety would be appropriate, however with the loss of Torbay Council’s Road Safety Team as part of budget savings, the provision has reduced significantly. However, Torbay Council’s Communications Team have undertaken promotion of our Road Safety messages and improvements across the Bay as and when resources allow. Vision Zero South West also provide resources to deliver and promote Road Safety across the region.

Killed and seriously injured (K.S.I.) (0 to 15 year age group)

Slight injuries (all ages)

Fig 8 shows the slight injuries for all ages and the 0-15’s within Torbay.

Whilst ‘slight’ overall are down from previous years, and the lowest since 2010 at 180, ‘slight child 0-15’ are up from last year by 4. However, both remain below the target levels for ‘slight’ all and ‘slight child 0-15’.

Of these ‘slight child 0-15’ casualties, 8 were pedestrians, 13 were passengers in a vehicle, 2 were on cycles and 1 on an electric scooter.

Of these 24 injuries the child could have been at fault due to inexperience or failure to look when entering the road, whilst 17 of the injuries were either due to them being a passenger in a vehicle that was hit (13) or hit due to the fault of another driver as a pedestrian (4)

As such the greater number of child slight injuries were unavoidable by the child as opposed to 7 collisions where education may have prevented the incident from occurring.

The slight casualties broken down by age and sex are:

Our greatest area of slight injuries remains within the 25-64 age group, with males being the higher number of injuries over females in all age categories.

This shows the main causation factors in all our 186 slight collisions. Some collisions may have more than one causation factor, explaining why the total number of factors may be different to the number of collisions or slight injuries.

The main factor still remains that of driver/ rider error, with pedestrian only being the second highest factor (failure to look, distracted, use of unsafe or inappropriate crossing point etc).

Vision Zero South West

Torbay Council continues to work closely with the Police to ensure enforcement is a key activity in road casualty reduction. The Council also works with the Vision Zero South West partnership to use camera enforcement and education to reduce speeds and red light violation. 

Find out more about Vision Zero South West.

There will be no Council revenue funding for the operation of Safety Cameras in 2023/24, however the operation and enforcement of the fixed safety camera sites within Torbay will continue.

The partnership are responsible for the maintenance of the cameras, whilst the authority are responsible for the poles and housings and any works required would be funded from our maintenance budget. Any proposed new sites may require Torbay Council to fund the capital costs of providing and installing any new fixed camera housings.

The authority will continue to work closely with the partnership to ensure that mobile safety camera activity is targeted at those locations where speed related problems continue in an effort to increase the visibility of enforcement.

Some existing fixed camera sites, which are reaching the end of their operational life, are being upgraded by the Partnership during 2024 as part of the ongoing programme of improvements by Vision Zero South West it is likely that this programme will continue in future years, where funding from the Partnership allows.

Over the coming years Torbay, in line with our partners in Vision Zero South West (VZSW), will move towards the Safe Systems approach to road safety with a target of providing a safe transport system, free from death and serious injury.

Planned road safety campaigns 2023/24

Reductions in local government grants from Central Government and the increasing demands on our services meant that difficult decisions had to be made and, as there is no statutory duty to provide Road Safety officers, the Mayors Budget for 2017/2018 resulted in the loss of posts within Road Safety.

No specific funding has been allocated by Torbay Council for 2024/25 and therefore there are no planned Road Safety Education Campaigns programmed for the forthcoming year.

The Communications and Engagement Team along with Highways Officers will continue to engage and support Vision Zero South West in 2024/25 to promote Road Safety Campaigns and Education across Torbay and the Devon and Cornwall Region.

Vision Zero South West continue to support events across the region and continue to provide educational events such as Learn 2 Live.