Reported number of accidents

Key Reported Road Casualties Scotland 2020

Reported number of accidents

Figure 1 shows the downward trend of injury road accidents recorded by the police. In 2020, there were 3,836 accidents in which someone was killed or injured. This was 34% lower than in 2019 and the lowest number since records began. There were 132 fatal accidents in 2020, 27 (17%) less than in 2019.In 2020, there were 1,364 serious injury accidents; and 2,340 slight injury accidents.

Due to changes in severity reporting the number of reported serious and slight accidents are not directly comparable to those reported in previous years. As outlined above, Police Scotland’s move to an injury-based reporting system has resulted in changes in severity reporting. Figure 2 shows how many serious accidents there would have been in previous years if they had been recorded using an injury-based reporting system.

These experimental statistics, produced by the Department for Transport, make it possible to compare the most recent statistics to previous years. On the basis of the adjusted figures, the number of serious accidents in 2020 decreased by 37% on 2019, and the number of slight accidents decreased by 30%.

Figure 1: Number of reported injury road accidents broken down by severity, 1999 – 2020.

Figure 1 shows the downward trend of injury road accidents recorded by the police. In 2020, there were 3,836 accidents in which someone was killed or injured. This was 34% lower than in 2019 and the lowest number since records began. There were 132 fatal accidents in 2020, 27 (17%) less than in 2019. In 2020, there were 1,364 serious injury accidents; and 2,340 slight injury accidents. Due to changes in severity reporting the number of reported serious and slight accidents are not directly comparable to those reported in previous years.

Note: Due to changes in the way casualty severity is recorded, figures for the number of serious and slight accidents are not comparable with previous years.

Figure 2: Number of serious road accidents, adjusted and unadjusted, 2004 – 2020.

Figure 2 shows how many serious accidents there would have been in previous years if they had been recorded using an injury-based reporting system. These experimental statistics, produced by the Department for Transport, make it possible to compare the most recent statistics to previous years. On the basis of the adjusted figures, the number of serious accidents in 2020 decreased by 37% on 2019, and the number of slight accidents decreased by 30%.

Source: Department for Transport (DfT). The adjusted figures in this chart are Experimental Statistics, the unadjusted figures are National Statistics. Figures in this chart may not match those reported elsewhere in this publication as Transport Scotland allows changes to be made to data for previous reporting years, and DfT does not.