The Role of the Surgeon

Welcome to the Project EDWARD podcast – My role in the safe system – with James Luckhurst. The March 2024 episode introduces us to a surgeon, who explains how greater sharing of collision data - and medical information about crash victims - could lead to a better understanding of the causes and the costs – both human and financial – of death and injury on the country’s roads – and improve safety in the process.Crash and casualty data is routinely collected by the police who attend incidents or are made aware of them. It is then published by the Department for Transport through a system called STATS19.However, to get a more rounded picture of collisions and harm on the road network this should be better linked to other sources of data, particularly injury data collected in the national medical dataset, Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), and that recorded by the ambulance service and other parties involved in the aftermath of road crashes.That is one conclusion of a report entitled – Data Linkage in Road Safety – funded by the RAC Foundation and the FIA Road Safety Grant Programme and I’m pleased to welcome its author to tell us more…