FOI REF: FOI-2023-1351
You asked
I would like to request the following data for the Borough of Wirral for the last 20 years please: Road traffic accidents in total, with cause and speed of collision, type vehicle, type of road and nature of outcome I.e no injuries, mild injury, serious injury and death.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:
a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or
b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
We only hold number of deaths where road traffic accident was the underlying cause. Unfortunately, we cannot provide information on speed of collision, type of vehicle or type of road because this level of detail is not recorded on the death certificate. We would suggest that the Department of Transport might be better placed to assist you with this information. They can provide numbers of fatal and non-fatal road traffic accidents. Their FOI team can be contacted at foi-advice-team-dft@dft.gov.uk
Where a death certificate records a road traffic accident as the underlying cause, we would assign an ICD-10 code from the range V01-V99 'Transport Accidents'.
Numbers of deaths registered by cause and local authority for England and Wales, for 2013 to 2021 are available via NOMIS. Data for 2022 will be added to NOMIS around mid to end of October 2023. Please see the following instructions to use the NOMIS webservice:
Select the geography - (England and Wales, regional or by local authority)
Select Age - All ages or 5-year age bands.
Select Gender - Total or Male/Female.
Select rates - All deaths, rates or percentage of population for example.
Select cause of death (select ICD-10 codes V01-V99)
Select format (Excel or CSV for example)
The number of deaths from road traffic accidents for specific local authorities or boroughs for 2001 to 2012 are available to request via our bespoke services route.
Such services are subject to legal frameworks, resources and agreement of costs, in line with our charging policy. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further.
As this information is reasonably accessible via another route, even if only accessible on payment, Section 21(2)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.