How Transport Scotland identifies locations for safety investigation

Road safety is a key priority for the Scottish Government. Transport Scotland undertakes an annual review of the trunk road network to identify locations where interventions may help reduce the likelihood and severity of collisions and support delivery of Scotland's Road Safety Framework to 2030.

The annual review follows a robust and evidence based process. Each year, Transport Scotland analyses injury collision data from across the trunk road network and identifies locations that may warrant further investigation. This includes:

• Collision cluster sites, where three or more personal injury collisions have occurred within a defined area during the preceding three full calendar years.
• Route sections with injury collision rates significantly above the national average for similar road types.
• Locations identified through the Trunk Road Risk Mapping process, which considers road characteristics and road environment factors that may indicate elevated risk even where injury collision numbers are relatively low.
• Information provided by Police Scotland, local authorities, road safety partnerships and other stakeholders.

This approach recognises that collisions do not always occur at a single point location and therefore also considers wider route-based trends and patterns. The objective is to ensure that available funding is directed towards those locations where interventions have the greatest potential to reduce casualties.

Collision data for the preceding three full calendar years is collated by the end of June each year. This allows any late returns of collision information to be included within the data sets before being analysed and reported on through the annual review in August of each year. The findings from this review informs the development of a programme of work for the following financial year.

Whilst the collision data used in the analysis is based on the preceding three full calendar years, discussions with Police Scotland, local authorities, road safety partnerships and other stakeholders allows for any current concerns to be considered.

Using personal injury collision data allows investment decisions to be evidence-led and targeted. Whilst there may be occasions where damage only and “near miss” incidents are cited, these are not used in informing safety interventions as there are no reliable data sources on these nationally. Additionally, records of “damage-only” incidents are not recorded via a standardised format as per Police injury-collision records.