Roads: Accidents

Department for Transport written question – answered at on 15 July 2019.

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Photo of Baroness Randerson Baroness Randerson Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Transport)

To ask Her Majesty's Government what statistics they have on accidents caused by litter or debris on roads in the UK.

Photo of Baroness Vere of Norbiton Baroness Vere of Norbiton Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip), Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The department does not collect data specifically on litter and debris causing road accidents. The department collects data on personal injury road accidents reported to the police, including contributory factors which the police select when they attend the scene. This does not assign blame for the accident but gives an indication of factors the attending officer thought contributed to the accident. This includes the contributory factors of ‘Deposit on road’ and ‘Animal or object in carriageway’, which might be used to record litter and debris.

‘Deposit on road’ includes any deposit arising from human (or animal) activity which has made sections of the road surface slippery or which has caused traction control problems for a vehicle. ‘Animal or object in carriageway’ includes any object which the driver would not expect to find in the carriageway (e.g. dislodged vehicle load, fallen tree) and which caused or contributed to the accident.

There were 1,058 road accidents with a contributory factor of ‘Deposit on road’ and 802 road accidents with a contributory factor of ‘Animal or object in carriageway’ in Great Britain in 2017.

Statistics on the number and proportion of accidents by contributory factor reported are available online in table RAS50001. All published tables on contributory factors are available in the RAS50 series on gov.uk.

The data we hold only covers reported personal injury road accidents in Great Britain, we do not have data for Northern Ireland.

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