Road traffic accidents involving personal injury

Name: Road traffic accidents involving personal injury.
Topic: Transport and tourism.

Division for Energy, Environmental and Transport Statistics.

National, county, municipalities and police districts figures.

Preliminary figures are published monthly, approximately 2 weeks after the end of the reference month.

Final figures are published about five months after the end of the reference year, by the end of May

Data are reported to Eurostat and International Transport Forum (formerly called ECMT).

Collected and revised data are stored securely by Statistics Norway in compliance with applicable legislation on data processing.

Statistics Norway can grant access to the source data (de-identified or anonymised microdata) on which the statistics are based, for researchers and public authorities for the purposes of preparing statistical results and analyses. Access can be granted upon application and subject to conditions. Refer to the details about this at Access to data from Statistics Norway.

The purpose is to provide information about accidents on Norwegian roads.

The statistics on road traffic accidents involving personal injury and other accidents involving major material damage was established in 1939. The obligation to report to the police accidents not involving personal injury was more or less abandoned in 1957, and since 1964 only accidents involving personal injury have been included in the statistics. The form used by the police to record accidents underwent major changes in 1954 and 1964. In 1977 it was completely revised into a joint form used by the police, Statistics Norway and road authorities. A more detailed account of the development of road traffic accident statistics from 1930 to 1977 is given in the publication NOS Road Traffic Accidents 1977.

Until May 2001 the statistics were based on forms submitted by regular mail by the police authorities. From May 2001 onwards the information has been submitted electronically. The scope of the statistics has been revised several times. Further information is provided in Chapter 6.1. Spatial comparability and comparability over time.

The statistics are used by research institutes, international organizations, municipalities and other public agencies, mainly for studies and analyses.

No external users have access to statistics before they are released at 8 a.m. on ssb.no after at least three months’ advance notice in the release calendar. This is one of the most important principles in Statistics Norway for ensuring the equal treatment of users.

To assess risk, the ratios of accidents to stocks of motor vehicles, vehicle-kilometres driven, type of road and population statistics by sex and age, should be considered. It is possible to merge accident data with data from other sources, for example the Norwegian Public Roads Administration’s registries of motor vehicles and driving licences.

The statistics are developed, produced and disseminated pursuant to Act no. 32 of 21 June 2019 relating to official statistics and Statistics Norway (the Statistics Act).

Council Decision (EC) no. 704/93.

The statistics only cover accidents reported to the police. Minor accidents and injuries are often not reported, and will therefore be underrepresented in the figures. The statistics are limited to accidents that involve at least one vehicle, and that have taken place on public or private roads, streets or places open to general traffic. Vehicles comprise civilian and military motor vehicles, vehicles running on rails and non-motorized vehicles. Only deaths that occur within 30 days after the date of the accident are included in the road traffic accidents statistics. To the extent that they are identified as such, accidents, injuries and deaths that happen due to seizures, suicides and suicide attempts are left out.

The Police's database of accidents. Nordic road traffic accidents figures are obtained from Statistics Denmark, Statistics Finland and Statistics Sweden.

All accidents mentioned in 3.1 are covered by the statistics.

Editing is defined here as checking, examining and amending data.The data is extracted from Police's database of accident records on the first weekday of the month and submitted electronically to Statistics Norway. All the police reports are processed in a computer program that identifies logical inconsistencies. Reports that contain such errors are subject to manual editing.

Employees of Statistics Norway have a duty of confidentiality.

Statistics Norway does not publish figures if there is a risk of the respondent’s contribution being identified. This means that, as a general rule, figures are not published if fewer than three units form the basis of a cell in a table or if the contribution of one or two respondents constitutes a very large part of the cell total.

Statistics Norway can make exceptions to the general rule if deemed necessary to meet the requirements of the EEA agreement, if the respondent is a public authority, if the respondent has consented to this, or when the information disclosed is openly accessible to the public.

More information can be found on Statistics Norway’s website under Methods in official statistics, in the ‘Confidentiality’ section.

Road traffic accidents statistics provide comparable time series for the period 1977 to 2001. In 2002, those registered with unspecified degree of injury were introduced as a separate category in the statistics. They had previously been distributed among the other injury categories. Hence, from 2002 onwards the figures for degree of injury are not quite comparable with the figures from 2001 and earlier years.

When comparing road accident figures between countries, factors such as size of population, stock of vehicles, total road length and quality of roads must be taken into consideration. Certain definitions and methods of registration may vary between countries. The Nordic countries do however use the same definition of fatalities ("The 30 days rule").

Some submitted forms are incompletely filled out, and lack information about certain variables. The police districts that have submitted such forms are contacted and asked to add the missing details during the manual editing process. Even so, residual, &“unspecified´´ categories remain a necessity in most of the tables that are published.

Special surveys have revealed that the official injury statistics far from cover all accidents involving personal injury. The extent to which accidents are reported varies with the type of accident and degree of injury. Less severe accidents often go unreported. This particularly applies to bicycle accidents, which often result in only minor injuries. Injured motorists may for various reasons choose not to report the accident to the police.

The total number of injuries includes casualties where the degree of injury has not been specified. Some people registered in this category may be uninjured, and figures are subject to change.

A revision is a planned change to figures that have already been published, for example when releasing final figures as a follow-up to published preliminary figures. See also Statistics Norway’s principles for revisions.