Road Traffic Accidents Data

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 14 January 2015

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Questions (980)

Tom Fleming

Question:

980. Deputy Tom Fleming asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will forward a report on the number of accidents that have occurred on Irish roads with trailers being the cause of the accidents; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49545/14]

Written answers

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport

The Road Safety Authority has carried out an analysis of collisions involving trailers, and an overview is provided in Table 1. The collision data provided to the RSA by An Garda Síochána relates to the specific vehicle types i.e. ‘Goods, rigid and trailer’ and ‘Goods, artic with semi-trailer’. Other vehicles towing trailers are not recorded in the data. Over the period 1996 to 2012, there has been a decline in the number of fatal, serious and minor injury collisions involving at least one of these vehicle types in line with the overall decline in collisions during this period. There were 248 incidents in 1996, and this reduced to 48 in 2012. Collisions involving goods vehicles with trailers represent 7% of all fatal collisions occurring over the period 1996-2012 and 4% of all serious injury collisions over the period. (see Table 1)  

  Table 1: Collisions by severity involving at least one Goods Vehicle with Trailer

-	-	-	Collision Type	-	-	-	-	No. of Collisions	-
-	-	Fatal	Serious	Minor	Total	Fatal Collisions	%	Serious Injury Collisions	%
Year	1996	30	55	163	248	415	7.2	1651	3.3
	1997	42	70	159	271	424	9.9	1544	4.5
	1998	32	62	187	281	408	7.8	1345	4.6
	1999	37	50	190	277	374	9.9	1302	3.8
	2000	28	64	184	276	362	7.7	1189	5.4
	2001	30	46	143	219	360	8.3	1034	4.4
	2002	22	26	118	166	346	6.4	827	3.1
	2003	21	28	124	173	301	7.0	796	3.5
	2004	30	15	102	147	334	9.0	662	2.3
	2005	21	23	111	155	360	5.8	787	2.9
	2006	19	25	94	138	321	5.9	653	3.8
	2007	17	26	108	151	309	5.5	618	4.2
	2008	18	19	104	141	254	7.1	613	3.1
	2009	12	14	94	120	220	5.5	463	3.0
	2010	4	18	74	96	186	2.2	409	4.4
	2011	9	3	43	55	172	5.2	348	0.9
	2012	7	6	35	48	152	4.6	333	1.8
Total		379	550	2033	2962	5298	7%	14574	4%

Over the period 1996-2012, where responsibility for the collision was attributed by a Garda at the scene, responsibility was attributed to the driver of a goods vehicle with trailer in 38% of cases (1,112 drivers), and, in 27% of cases (800 drivers), responsibility was attributed to a private car driver. Responsibility for any given collision can be assigned to more than one of the drivers involved.

The number of fatal collisions involving trailers attached to other vehicle types is shown in Table 2 as follows for the period 2012-2014. In one of the eight collisions as follows, responsibility for the collision was attributed to the driver of the vehicle towing the trailer.  

Table 2

Year	No. of fatal collisions involving vehicles with trailers	Vehicle type
2012	4	2 Tractors with trailers 1 Jeep with trailer 1 4x4 with trailer
2013*	3	2 tractors with trailers 1 jeep with trailer
2014*	1	1 Tractor with trailer

*Data is provisional and subject to change