Instructions:
The principal anatomical region of the body where a vulnerable user sustained the most severe injury as a result of a crash.
Definition:
The primary or most obvious area of the vulnerable user’s body injured during the crash.
Rationale:
This element is important for evaluating crash causation, injury severity, and safety system design and effectiveness. Identifying the primary injury area for vulnerable road users supports the assessment of infrastructure design, protective equipment (e.g., helmets, reflective gear), and emergency response outcomes. It also enables analysis of injury patterns by user type and crash scenario, which is essential for developing evidence-based countermeasures to reduce the frequency and severity of injuries among non-motorized road users.
| Code | Attribute | Definition | Example |
| 1 | Head | Used for injuries primarily affecting the skull, brain, face, or other cranial structures. |  |
| 2 | Upper Limbs | Used for injuries primarily affecting the shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, or hands. |  |
| 3 | Torso | Used for injuries primarily affecting the chest, abdomen, back, spine (excluding head/neck). |  |
| 4 | Lower Limbs | Used for injuries primarily affecting the hips, thighs, knees, legs, ankles, or feet. |  |
| 9 | None | Used when the vulnerable user did not sustain an injury in the crash. | |
| 97 | Other | Used when the primary injury is to a region not listed above. Please specify in the narrative. | |
| 99 | Unknown | Used when the primary injury area could not be determined at the time of the report. |
Accuracy Checks
- If this field is completed, confirm the Vulnerable User check box is also indicated.
- None (9) means the vulnerable user was not injured. It is a real answer and is preferable to leaving the field empty.
- Record the area of the most severe injury, not every area injured.
- If Injury Status indicates an injury, this field should not be empty.
Other Related Fields
Data Quality Audit Results
| 2025 records | Count | Percent |
| Acceptable | 3,283 | 79.4% |
| Unknown | 232 | 5.6% |
| Empty | 587 | 14.2% |
| Invalid | 32 | 0.8% |
| Total | 4,134 | 100% |
For the Vulnerable User Primary Injury Area field, 79 percent of 2025 records carry a value. Lower Limbs is the most common (1,106), then Head (698), Upper Limbs (588) and Torso (340); 408 records record None, meaning no injury. Other was used on 143 records and 32 hold a value that is not one of the allowed codes. The remaining 20 percent is empty (14 percent) or Unknown (6 percent). Head injuries at 17 percent of all records are the figure most likely to be used in safety analysis, so completeness here matters more than the raw rate suggests.
From the 2025 Vulnerable User data quality audit. This field was not part of the narrative comparison, so the table reports completeness only. Its total is 4,134 rather than the 4,098 on the seven core field pages because it was tabulated later in 2026, after 36 more 2025 reports had been finished.