Police and health data on road crashes to be linked in feasibility

The Department for Transport is examining whether police crash records and ambulance service data can be reliably combined, with a feasibility study now under way as the first stage of a wider research project.

At present, the two datasets sit in separate systems. Police attend collision scenes and record what they observe, while ambulance crews assess and treat casualties and log their own clinical findings. The two accounts of the same incident are rarely matched against each other, which means the full picture of how seriously people are hurt on British roads has never been clear from either source alone.

The study uses a subset of ambulance records from one area and has been developed in partnership with the Pre-hospital Research and Audit Network, known as PRANA. By treating this as a controlled first stage, researchers can test whether the records can be linked accurately before any attempt to roll the approach out more broadly.

For garages and their customers, the practical relevance is straightforward. Road safety policy, including decisions about MOT test standards, speed limits and road design, is shaped by injury statistics. If those statistics have been underreporting the true severity of collisions because the health side of the data was never joined up, then the policies built on them may need revisiting. More complete data would eventually give regulators a firmer foundation for any future changes to vehicle safety or roadworthiness requirements.