Background Low and middle income countries account for 92% of deaths from road traffic injuries (RTI) in the world. Furthermore, the mortality data completeness and reliability are poorer than high income countries. Because of that, it’s necessary to qualify the databases to produce health indicators that adequately portray that situation. The data record linkage enables greater use of existing data in different sources of data. The objective was to measure the magnitude of deaths and serious injuries by using record linkage and to estimate correction factors for health and road traffic databases and in five urban areas that represent all macro regions of the Brazil.

Method Cross-Sectional study, using the road traffic victim database (VIT), Information System of Hospitalisation (SIH) and Mortality Information System (SIM), the year of 2013 for Teresina and 2012 for the remaining four cities. For the linkage procedure, the software RecLink 3 was used. The number of deaths and serious injured victims of RTI were identified. The overall global percentage of correction of the underlying cause of death and the hospitalisation diagnosis were estimated and the victim condition in the road traffic database.

Result The overall percentage of correction of the underlying cause of death for the SIM were 29.9, 11.9, 4.2, and 33.5 respectively to Belo Horizonte, Campo Grande, Curitiba and Teresina. For the city of Palmas, there was no correction. For the SIH, the percentage of correction of the hospitalisation cause were 24.4 for Belo Horizonte, 96.9 for Campo Grande, 100 for Palmas and 33 for Teresina. For the VIT, there were changes in the victim’s severity classification with overall percentage of 100 for Belo Horizonte and Teresina, 48 for Campo Grande and 51 for Palmas.

Conclusion There are considerable gaps and limitations on information system that record RTI, requiring the incorporation of national standards and integration between health databases and traffic databases.