I believe that data makes little sense without context. Often, we are lacking adequate information on context. When researching disease, knowing the age and sex of the patients is almost always important. When considering road injury research, it is harder to arrive at such an understanding because firstly there are both drivers and casualties to consider, and secondly there may be more than one driver. One of the most substantial weaknesses in the official road safety …

In total, over the four decades for which we have data (1979-2018), 147,562 fatalities have been reported to the police. Whilst it is the case that the number of reported fatalities has reduced considerably:

• In 2018, 1,784 fatalities were reported. This still feels like a substantial tragedy and many argue there is considerable potential to reduce this much further if we took the decisions (such as limiting urban speeds) to make roads safer.
• The decline in road …

In the event of a road collision involving at least one vehicle and one injury, there is a requirement in the UK to report to the police within 30 days. The data are called “STATs19” after the form on which the data are collected, and are made available as “Open Data” for anyone to analyse.

This immediately raises a number of points:

1. What is a “road” collision (do car parks, driveways, private roads count)?
2. What is an “injury”? More specifically, injury severity is coded …

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Having worked as an academic, as a Data Scientist, as a Business Intelligence Specialist as well as doing a lot of consulting I have learnt a lot about the way we use data, and the way people perceive “statistics” (whatever that word really means).

Sometimes, a problem is so straightforward it only requires technical input (data processing) and it’s solved. More often though, a lot more interpretation is needed. …