TfL plays down data showing 26% KSI rise

ROAD SAFETY

Transport for London this week played down provisional data showing a 26 per cent rise in the number of people killed or seriously injured (KSIs) on London’s roads, saying that the figure was likely to be adjusted downwards. 

Provisional casualty figures for quarter 3 (July-September) 2018 show 1,220 KSIs, 26 per cent up on the 966 recorded in Q3 2017. 

But a TfL spokeswoman told LTT: “The KSI figures included in the report are provisional and yet to be quality assured by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), so they are higher than you can expect the final figure to be. The MPS quality assure all serious casualty data and this process sees between 15-30 per cent of serious casualties reassigned to a slight severity each month.”

The data shows cyclist KSIs up 83 per cent from 153 to 280; motorcyclist KSIs up 20 per cent from 288 to 345; and other motorised vehicle user KSIs up 62 per cent from 159 to 258. Pedestrian KSIs fell 7 per cent, from 366 to 337. 

Road accident fatalities increased from 28 to 31. 

Despite TfL’s comments about the data being likely to be adjusted downwards, the report presenting the data actually suggests that a rise in cyclist KSIs may have been due to the good weather.

“Levels of cycling increased by 7.5 per cent in central London during Q3 2018 compared to the same quarter last year, to the highest level on record,” it says. Quarter 3 2018 was “one of the driest and warmest on record, and July 2018 being the second warmest ever recorded”. 

The aggregate data shows that males are much more likely to be accident casualties than females. Males account for 876 (72 per cent) of the 1,220 KSIs in Q3 2018/19, little changed from the 73 per cent in Q3 2017/18. 

Meanwhile, a TfL spokeswoman told LTT this week that road accident fatality data for 2018 in the capital was likely to show a big drop, from 130 in 2017 to 102.