Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what information his Department holds on the number of vehicle collisions which resulted in an injury that were (a) caused and (b) partly caused by a medical episode experienced by a driver.

DfT reported road casualty statistics reports numbers of personal injury road traffic collisions in Great Britain that were reported to the police using the STATS19 reporting system.

STATS19 does not record the causes of collisions. However, attending police officers can record up to six factors that they believe contributed to collisions as part of the STATS19 dataset. Officers do not need to carry out a full investigation of the collision before allocating factors, usually using professional judgement about what they can see at the scene.

In 2022, there were 1,930 road collisions for which police assigned ‘Illness or disability, mental or physical’ of a driver or rider as a contributory factor towards the collision.

This contributory factor ‘Illness or disability, mental or physical’ is defined as a driver or rider either suddenly overcome by illness (e.g., fit or blackout) or generally affected by illness (e.g., cold or flu), or suffering from a permanent disability, which contributed to the collision. This also includes where a driver or rider sneezing or coughing contributes to the collision, as well as poor mental health (e.g., depression).