Today's publication of road casualties statistics for 2006 contains a smokescreen intended to obscure the abject failure of Department for Transport's serious injury statistics. See the section entitled: "The use of hospital data on road accidents."

It has been perfectly obvious for years that something has been going wrong with the serious injury statistics because they have been out of kilter with other data sources.

This is serious for Department for Transport because it has only been the ongoing reduction in the serious injury category that has enabled them to claim that their road safety policies were meeting their own targets.

In 2004 Safe Speed warned that the serious injury series was unsuitable for year on year comparison. [1]

In 2006 the British Medical Journal published hospital data showing clearly that the numbers admitted to hospital had not declined for a decade. Over the same period DfT serious injury figures had declined by 35%. [2]

It only takes brief analysis to prove that the Hospital statistics are robust and suitable for year on year comparison while the STATS19 serious injury statistics are extremely vulnerable to changes in reporting and classification.Each and every entry in the Hospital statistical record represent the decision of a doctor to admit a patient. This is what makes the hospital statistics robust and highly suitable for year-on-year comparison. It doesn't make them 'perfect' - no data source is - but it does make them an awful lot more robust than DfT's serious injury stats.

Department for Transport has published a section in Road Casualties Great Britain 2006 which introduces numerous red herrings with the obvious intention of obfuscating the issue.

Paul Smith, founder of SafeSpeed.org.uk, said: "Department for Transport is clearly attempting to create a smokescreen to hide the fact that hospitalisation figures prove that their road safety policies have failed. Once again they would rather save face than save lives. They must be stopped from hiding the failure of their own policies. It is shameful and cowardly.Ultimately it is deadly because life saving resources are being misallocated.DfT must be held to account."

"They are introducing more red herrings than you've had hot dinners."

"It's a smokescreen clearly designed to hide the fact that their targets are being missed by a country mile."