Data on serious injuries are available for most countries from the CARE database. However, there is another common definition of a serious injury which defines a serious road injury as a road traffic casualty with an MAIS (Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale) score of 3 or more (MAIS3+). EU Member States undertook to collect data on MAIS3+, as part of the 2017 Valletta Council conclusions on road safety.
The Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) is a globally accepted anatomical-based trauma classification of injuries published by the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). It is used by medical professionals to describe injuries and rank their severity on an ordinal scale from 1 (minor injuries) to 6 (non-treatable injuries). As one person can have more than one injury, the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (MAIS) is the maximum AIS of all injury diagnoses for a person. There are three main methods to collect this data all of which are in one way or another based on hospital data: 1. create a link between police and hospital data; 2. report the number of injured based on data from hospitals; 3. continue to use the police data but apply a correction coefficient derived from samples of hospital data.
As part of a project in 2022, AAAM have kindly provided the European Commission with the following tools:
- a short powerpoint presentation of MAIS3+;
- a video tutorial about converting ICD to AIS either with commentary (15 minute video) or a basic presentation;
- a recording of a live session (AAAM, European Commission and EU Member States) in December 2022 explaining AIS, ISS, Mapping Process, etc and answering specific questions from EU Member States.
See also reports from the European Road Safety Observatory
Thematic report on serious injuries and Facts and Figures on serious injuries