FOI reference: FOI-2026-3545
You asked
For pedestrian fatalities on A roads in Wales caused by a vehicle in the last 10 years I would like to know the speed a vehicle was travelling at, given in coroner's report where the speed limit on the road was 20mph or 30mph. I would also like to know the type of vehicle.
To summarise,
- Last 10 years
- On A roads
- Where limit was 20mph or 30mph (please identify the speed limit at the time of the fatality) Vehicle type Coroner's estimate of the vehicle speed at time of impact (this is the important piece)
We said
Thank you for your request.
Our mortality data come from the information collected at death registration. All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes, an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as:
a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or
b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
We only hold number of deaths where road traffic accident was the underlying cause. Unfortunately, we do not hold statistics showing the speed of collision, type of vehicle or type of road because this level of detail is not recorded on the death certificate. We would suggest that the Department of Transport might be better placed to assist you with this information. They can provide numbers of fatal and non-fatal road traffic accidents. Their Freedom of Information (FOI) team can be contacted at foi-advice-team-dft@dft.gov.uk.
Alternatively, Stats Wales publishes annual data on road traffic accidents on their Police recorded road casualties by speed limit and severity web page, which is an interactive data table allowing you to create a custom table by speed limit and setting the severity type to "killed". The full dataset is also explorable, which breaks down the type of vehicle.
Where a death certificate records a road traffic accident as the underlying cause, we would assign an ICD-10 code from the range V01-V99 "Transport Accidents".
Numbers of deaths registered by cause and local authority for England and Wales, for 2013 to 2024, are available via NOMIS. Please see the following instructions to use the NOMIS web service:
select the geography – (England and Wales, regional, or by local authority)
select age – all ages, or five-year age bands
select gender – total, or male or female
select rates – all deaths, rates or percentage of population, for example
select cause of death (select ICD-10 codes V01-V99)
select format (Excel or CSV, for example)
For further information, please contact: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.