THE ACCURACY OF ACCIDENT DATA

Accident data are the central resource used for evaluating the effectiveness of a remedial treatment. It is important to have reliable data in order to identify problems and obtain an informative evaluation of any particular treatment. For that purpose, time and effort is devoted by Police and Highway Authorities to checking and correcting the data before use and before they become nationally available in the STATS 19. This paper reports the results of a survey of all Highway Authorities in Great Britain, in an attempt to examine the problem of inaccuracy of accident data and the amount of time and manpower devoted to checking and correcting them.