Welsh Government | Young Drivers and Road Accidents, 2010

Young Drivers and Road Accidents, 2010

The latest National Statistics about young drivers (aged under 25) and road accidents produced by the Welsh Assembly Government were released on 23 June 2011 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.

Statistics on young drivers and road accidents include data for Wales for the period up to the year 2010. This is not a regularly updated release which looks at the extent to which young drivers are more likely to be involved in accidents than older drivers. It also looks at the types of accidents that involve young drivers and whether or not these differ from the types of accidents that involve older drivers

The key points from the latest release include:

Young drivers are more likely to be involved in an accident than older drivers.
Are more likely to be involved in certain types of accident than older drivers.
But are not more likely to be involved in a fatal or serious accident, as compared with a slight accident than older drivers.
Young men are more likely to be involved in an accident than young women, but not to any greater extent than the general tendency of men to be more involved in accidents.
Road safety is now improving for both older drivers and for young drivers.
More 18, 19 and 20 year olds are involved in accidents than other single year age groups amongst young drivers.
Some valley authorities (especially Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly) and Isle of Anglesey are relative ‘hot spots’ for young drivers’ involvement in accidents.
Hence, if a young driver is involved in an accident, then it is less likely to be a fatal or serious accident in more urban local authority areas; more likely to be a fatal or serious accident in more rural local authorities.

Note

The number of road traffic fatalities during 2010 has been revised downwards (at 3 August 2011) from 95 to 89 compared with figures used to compile this Statistical Bulletin. This change does not affect earlier years and the figures for seriously and slightly injured casualties are unchanged.

The reason for this change is that these fatalities have been reclassified as being the result of natural causes, rather than the result of the associated traffic accident. The people involved were all older car drivers and no other person was involved in any of these incidents. So this change has also reduced the number of accidents in 2010 by six as well. This revision only affects South Wales Police and changes the number of fatalities in that area during 2010 from 36 to 30.

This revision does not affect any of the figures shown in this Bulletin about young drivers and so this Bulletin is not being changed; though the revision to total fatalities may affect any comparisons between casualties in this group and casualties as a whole for 2010.