Abstract
Abstract
Background
Road safety is a major global concern and is the subject of attention from national, trans-national, and global agencies and bureaus in order to achieve a lower number of injuries and fatalities in road traffic. Effective injury prevention requires data of sufficient quality and completeness, and national official road safety statistics is frequently under-reporting the number of injuries amongst vulnerable road users.
Objective
This study investigates how well the number of injuries amongst vulnerable road users correlate between national official road safety statistics and national hospitalization statistics.
Methods
We compared the number of non-fatal injuries amongst pedestrians and bicycles involved in traffic incidents in the national official road safety statistic to the national hospitalization statistics in Luxembourg (2013-2021) and Denmark (2008-2014). Data sources include LU police statistics (STATEC) and Statistics Denmark for official traffic injury statistics and The European Injury Database for national hospitalization statistics.
Results
In Luxembourg and Denmark, the incidence of hospital-recorded bicycle injuries ranged from 25.7 to 147 and 27.4 to 59.6 per 100,000 citizens/year respectively, with a hospital-to-police records ratio of 3.00 to 8.39 and 1.91 to 3.27 respectively. For pedestrians, the hospital-recorded incidence varied from 22.4 to 36.4 and 1.59 to 5.73 injuries/100.000 citizens/year respectively with a hospital-to-police records ratio of 0.385 to 0.744 and 0.207 and 0.566.
Conclusions
This study shows that the incidence of injuries involving vulnerable road users vary considerably depending on chosen data source with consistently higher hospital-based incidence for bicycle injuries and higher police-based incidence for pedestrians.
Key messages
• Accurate injury statistics are necessary for sufficient accident prevention initiatives, and this study calls for a thorough understanding of data collection routines and management across investigated data sources and countries.
• The incidence of injuries involving vulnerable road users vary considerably depending on chosen data source.
Topic
Road safety, vulnerable road user, data source.
Background
Road safety is a major global concern and is the subject of attention from national, trans-national, and global agencies and bureaus in order to achieve a lower number of injuries and fatalities in road traffic. Effective injury prevention requires data of sufficient quality and completeness, and national official road safety statistics is frequently under-reporting the number of injuries amongst vulnerable road users.
Objective
This study investigates how well the number of injuries amongst vulnerable road users correlate between national official road safety statistics and national hospitalization statistics.
Methods
We compared the number of non-fatal injuries amongst pedestrians and bicycles involved in traffic incidents in the national official road safety statistic to the national hospitalization statistics in Luxembourg (2013-2021) and Denmark (2008-2014). Data sources include LU police statistics (STATEC) and Statistics Denmark for official traffic injury statistics and The European Injury Database for national hospitalization statistics.
Results
In Luxembourg and Denmark, the incidence of hospital-recorded bicycle injuries ranged from 25.7 to 147 and 27.4 to 59.6 per 100,000 citizens/year respectively, with a hospital-to-police records ratio of 3.00 to 8.39 and 1.91 to 3.27 respectively. For pedestrians, the hospital-recorded incidence varied from 22.4 to 36.4 and 1.59 to 5.73 injuries/100.000 citizens/year respectively with a hospital-to-police records ratio of 0.385 to 0.744 and 0.207 and 0.566.
Conclusions
This study shows that the incidence of injuries involving vulnerable road users vary considerably depending on chosen data source with consistently higher hospital-based incidence for bicycle injuries and higher police-based incidence for pedestrians.
Key messages
• Accurate injury statistics are necessary for sufficient accident prevention initiatives, and this study calls for a thorough understanding of data collection routines and management across investigated data sources and countries.
• The incidence of injuries involving vulnerable road users vary considerably depending on chosen data source.
Topic
Road safety, vulnerable road user, data source.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Nov 2025 |
| Event | 12th European Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (EU-SAFETY 2025) - Heraklion, Greece Duration: 30 Sept 2025 → 2 Oct 2025 https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/issue/35/Supplement_5?trk=feed_main-feed-card_feed-article-content&login=false |
Conference
| Conference | 12th European Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (EU-SAFETY 2025) |
|---|---|
| Abbreviated title | EU-SAFETY 2025 |
| Country/Territory | Greece |
| City | Heraklion |
| Period | 30/09/25 → 2/10/25 |
| Internet address |
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