Award for identifying vulnerable road users

Dorset Police, in conjunction with Dorset County Hospital, have been presented with an award recognising their efforts understanding local data in order to identify those who are most at risk of serious injury on the roads of Dorset.

On Wednesday 20 April, Dorset Police and Dorset County Hospital were presented with the Trauma, Audit and Research Network (TARN) Annual award.

TARN provides accurate and relevant information to help doctors, nurses and other agencies improve their services. TARN recognises the individual or team who has made best use of trauma data in order to improve the quality of care.

The Dorset Road Death Overview Panel identified that motorcyclists were a particularly vulnerable road user group.

Motorcyclists account for 1% of the road miles travelled in Dorset, but they accounted for nearly 25% of those who were seriously injured or killed on our roads during 2010–2014.

Dorset Police Inspector Matt Butler from the Alliance Road Policing Team and Dr Ian Mew from Dorset County Hospital led an initiative to analyse police data and data collected from TARN, to identify those motorcyclists at greatest risk of death and critical injuries on Dorset’s roads.

Victoria Phillipson, Project Manager for TARN, said: “The team showed creative use of data collected through TARN combined with local statistics to highlight those most at risk.

“They demonstrated excellent levels of communication and engagement with the target audience and the public which lead this submission to stand out to the judging committee.”

Inspector Matt Butler, Alliance Road Policing Team, said: “This is the first time that we are aware of TARN data being combined with police data to properly identify those individuals at risk of the most serious injury.

“We look forward to putting what we have learned from this data into educating motorcyclists on the roads in Dorset.”