Three ambulances parked at VGH Emergency with paramedics in the background

Collision data

Transportation related injuries are the second highest cause of serious injuries arriving at hospital emergency departments.

We use collision data to:

Identify key safety issues
Prioritize intersections and corridors in need of detailed safety assessments
Develop effective safety strategies
Monitor our progress

Get the numbers

To better understand transportation related collisions and avoid any gaps in our analysis we are currently reviewing a variety of data sources:

Transportation related fatalities from the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) : VPD provides fatality data shortly after they occur.

Collision claims reported to ICBC : ICBC collects all reported vehicle and motorcycle collisions in Vancouver and provides this data to us every year. ICBC data has been our most extensive data source for many years.

Current data trends

Traffic Related Fatalities

Fatalities by city

Serious Injuries

Traffic Related Fatalities

Collision Data

Number of Serious Injury Patients

Other data sources we are exploring

To understand traffic related injuries, we are looking at the following data sources from our health partners:

Hospital injury data
Ambulance data

Hospital injury data
Since 2016, we have been collecting collision-related injury data from Vancouver hospitals. Before we began collecting this data, we had no information about serious injuries to track our progress. Other data sources do not tell the whole story. They do not include:
- Information about collisions not involving a motor vehicle (for example: bike-to-pedestrian and bike-to-bike collisions, and single bike and single pedestrian falls)
- Demographics that identify injuries affecting at risk groups, such as seniors, children, and those with mobility challenges
- The severity of collision-related injuries
Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) receives the majority of patients with serious injuries because it is the only level one adult trauma centre in Vancouver. Some key findings from the VGH data include:
- Traffic related injuries are the second highest cause of injuries arriving at the VGH Emergency Department.
- Vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists) are the most susceptible to fatalities and serious injuries.
- Seniors are at high risk of traffic related fatalities and serious injuries.
- A significant percentage of cycling related serious injuries do not involve a motor vehicle. Most of these injuries not involving a motor vehicle are single cyclist falls.
Ambulance injury data
BC Ambulance data can assist us in improving gaps in our hospital injury data by:
- Providing GPS coordinates with exact patient pick up (injury locations) and hospital drop off location (especially useful for injuries missing positional data from hospital records)
- Capturing injuries happening in Vancouver that were treated at nearby hospitals outside Vancouver
- Assisting us in identifying injuries happening outside of Vancouver but treated at hospitals in Vancouver