Objectives: Claims of sharp reductions in Chinese traffic casualties after 2002 based on police-reported data have been questioned in the literature. The objective of this study is to determine whether a decline in casualties occurred and to better understand the police data.
Methods: The first of 2 unrelated studies analyzed data from 210 military hospitals throughout China providing records for inpatients injured in traffic accidents (2001-2007). The second compared in-depth crash records (2000-2006) from one city to officially released data.
Results: Hospital data showed that casualties increased from 2002 to 2007. The city investigation showed consistently far more fatalities and injuries in the in-depth data than officially released. For example, in-depth data showed 1,720 fatalities. Only 557 of these were reported officially (data loss = 68%). Disaggregating into 3 regions showed a data loss of 41% in urban areas, 63% in rural areas, and 90% in rural-urban fringe zones. For injuries, data losses were even greater.
Conclusions: Traffic fatalities and injuries did not decrease from 2002 to 2006. The in-depth city data contained 3 times as many fatalities and 5 times as many injuries as reported by police. Reasons why this occurred and suggestions to improve data collection and reduce casualties are given.
Keywords: China; data bias; road crash; traffic fatality; traffic injury.