1. Main Points

1.1 There was a total of 7,594 road casualties reported in 2019 this is 830 or 10% fewer than 2018 and the lowest number of casualties since annual records began in 1950. Of which there were:

168 fatalities: 7 (or 4%) more than 2018
2,001 seriously injured
5,425 slightly injured [Table 2].

1.2 By mode, in 2019 there were:

4,557 car user casualties (528, 10% less than 2018); including 78 fatalities (3 more than 2018)
1,243 pedestrian casualties (13, 1% less than 2018); including 46 fatalities (12 more than 2018)
519 motorcycle casualties (121, 19% less than 2018); including 25 fatalities (8 less than 2018)
564 pedal cycle casualties (74, 12% less than 2018); including 8 fatalities (2 more than 2018)
195 bus and coach user casualties (35, 15% less than 2018) [Table 3].

These figures take no account of changes in modal choice so changes could be because more or fewer people are travelling by a particular mode.

1.3 In 2019 there were 759 child casualties reported, 5 (1%) more than in 2018. This included 2 fatalities, 1 fewer than last year [Table 4]. Conclusions on trend cannot be made from a single year’s data as the numbers are small and fluctuate from year to year. Trends using a three year average are included in table 7.

1.4 In 2019 there were 110 male fatalities, the same as 2018. Female fatalities rose by 7 (14%) to 58. Thirteen per cent (986) of all casualties were aged 16–22, a fall of 10% on 2018, of which 555 were male and 430 were female. Casualties aged under 5 rose by 1, from 125 to 126 between 2018 and 2019 [Table 12].

1.5 Scotland’s road safety framework to 2020 contains 5 national targets for casualty reductions by 2020. Currently available data allows us to measure progress against 3 targets; progress against all targets will be published in October 2020. Scotland’s performance is currently on track to meet 2 of those 3 targets, although in each case there has been a significant improvement since the 2004-2008 baseline.

168 people were killed in 2019, a reduction of 42% since the baseline (performance currently exceeding the 2020 target of a 40% reduction) [Table 5]
2,001 people were seriously injured in 2019 [Table 6] Due to the changes in the recording of casualty severities, progress against this target is measured on the basis of adjusted figures, which show a reduction of 33% from the baseline (performance not currently on track to meet the 2020 target of a 55% reduction) [Table 2b].
On average, there were 2 children killed each year between 2017 and 2019: a reduction of 85% since the baseline (performance currently exceeding the 2020 target of a 50% reduction) [Table 7]