Introduction In Sri Lanka, a road traffic crash (RTC) has to be reported to the police within 3 days of the incident and a police report is essential to claim insurance. In 2005, payment of the claim at the time of the crash (on the spot) was introduced. We analysed all RTCs reported to the Kandy police for the period 1999 to 2008 to describe trends in RTCs and the effect of this policy change in the RTC information system.

Methodology Traffic police data was used. The number of crashes, deaths and injuries for each year were included in this analysis. If a road user was killed in the crash it was categorised a fatal crash and if at least one road user was injured, the crash was an injury producing crash.

Results A total of 9679 RTCs were reported during the period of study, of which 136 were fatal crashes and 2654 were injury producing crashes. They killed 151 and injured 3310 road users, respectively. Although, there was a 24.9% reduction of total RTCs from 1999 to 2008, there was a 160% increase in fatal crashes and 15.1% increase in injury producing crashes during the same period. Crashes producing damage only has reduced by 50.9%.

Discussion and conclusions The analysis shows that RTCs is reducing in Kandy, but the actual situation is different. Inclusion of insurance data into the road traffic crash information system is essential in the analysis of RTCs in Kandy, Sri Lanka in the future.