Over 5,500 Vulnerable Road Users were killed or injured in collisions with goods vehicles commonly used in construction in 2018 – and with a new online dashboard, you can now use data filters to better see those incident locations, graphs of peak times, and other prominent contributory factors.

CLOCS, FORS and the Mineral Products Association co-invested to create an interactive dashboard (full dashboard available early July) that allows CLOCS Champions and FORS and MPA members to easily interrogate the system – allowing users to better understand the numbers, trends and commonest contributory factors of the 28,000 fatal, serious injury or slight injury collisions over the last 5 years between pedestrians/motorcyclists/pedal cyclists and goods vehicles commonly used in construction.

Headline stats: The wider sector can see the headline stats PDF but members will soon have access to the full filter functionality – just another benefit from co-investing in the national CLOCS programme. > View headline stats here

CLOCS led the partnership to commission Agilysis, one of the UK’s leading road safety statistical analysts, to identify those DVLA-listed goods vehicle body types that are prominent in construction and so become the first UK industry sector to refine the previous crude catch-all of HGVs or LGVs.

You will be able to change the filters on the dashboard to explore a wide range of factors and issues and compile your own graphs. You can define the years (2018 is the latest DfT has released), UK regions and the severity of injury. You can show the age/gender demographic of the casualties and their travel mode, goods vehicle characteristics (including age, rigid/articulated etc.), pedestrian location and movement moments before the collision. You can also see the most prominent contributory factors attributed by police to the casualty and/or driver, and the encouraging reduction in collisions relative to UK construction output (value).

The analysis shows:

• Fatal and serious injury collisions between VRUs and heavy/light goods vehicles used widely in UK construction rose by over 16% between 2014-2018 (from 1,621 to 1,884)
• 46% of those Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) were pedestrians, 32% motorcyclists and 22% pedal cyclists
• Across all sectors, VRU KSIs involving HGVs rose by 11% from 2014-18 to 540
• West Midlands has suffered the fastest and greatest increase in the absolute number of people killed/injured in collisions with HGVs – up 78% since 2014-18 as proportion of regional population – and only slightly more than South East, East and London.
• Driver observation errors (misjudging speed, not looking properly) remain the commonest contributory factor identified by the attending police officer. Pedestrian’s behaviour remains similarly prevalent.
• Relative to construction output, VRU KSIs involving construction vehicles is declining – but not fast enough as 1 traumatised family is too many and 1,884/annum is 8 casualties every working day.

See the headline stats to better understand what you and others can do to prevent any further collisions between construction vehicles and our communities.

Note for CLOCS Champions: you will receive a link in July with full access to the dashboard.