FOI 962/25

Request

I appreciate that incidents may not always be recorded explicitly as "road rage". In such cases, please include incidents where your records or incident logs reference aggressive or violent interactions specifically involving vehicle users in traffic-related confrontations.

Please provide data for each month and calendar year separately, from 2019 to the most recent data available (2025), including:

1. Total number of recorded road rage incidents (or incidents matching the definition above).
2. The number of these incidents involving an assault, broken down by the following categories:
• Common Assault
• Assault occasioning Actual Bodily Harm (ABH)
• Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH)
• Other violent offences arising directly from road rage incidents (please specify clearly if used).
3. Age and gender of offenders identified in connection with these incidents, broken down by year and by category of assault where possible.
4. Incident outcomes, including but not limited to:
• Arrests made
• Charges brought
• Cautions issued
• Community resolutions
• No further action (NFA) decisions
• Any other outcomes recorded.

Please provide outcomes broken down by assault category and by year.

Clarifications:

• If your systems do not directly record or classify incidents as “road rage”, please conduct keyword searches or similar analytical methods to identify incidents clearly matching the provided definition. If conducting such a search would exceed cost limits under FOIA, please advise on how this request might be narrowed to remain compliant.
• If precise age or gender details cannot be provided due to privacy or resource constraints, please provide the information in age bands (e.g., 16-25, 26-35, etc.), and gender data only if easily accessible without extensive manual checking.

Response

Your request for information has now been considered and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.       

In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.

A search has been conducted on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS) for all occurrences containing the keywords ‘Road Rage’ in the requested time period. This search retrieved 2537 records. The data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your query, therefore, to accurately answer your request we would need to individually interrogate all occurrences recorded.

Keyword searches are notoriously unreliable, the reasons why searches using this method are not reliable include (but are not limited to) the following: –

1. a) Searches rely on the keywords being spelt correctly with no grammatical errors
2. b) Searches rely on the keywords actually being mentioned in the Modus Operandi (MO) or the summary description of the record – if they are mentioned anywhere else within the record but not in the MO or summary, then they will not feature in any results

South Wales Police do not routinely conduct keyword searches. The results retrieved are dependent on how the information has been entered onto the system. As such, the information provided by keyword searches should not be considered statistically accurate and/or definitive and therefore, care should be taken when using this data for any further statistical, analytical or evaluative purposes.

Whilst I cannot quantify exactly how long this would take to interrogate all occurrences to provide the requested information it would most certainly exceed the 18 hours stipulated by the regulations.

It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the "appropriate level" as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.

If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 applies to the whole request.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.

Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit. Unfortunately, due to the way in which data is recorded, we can see no feasible way in which you could refine your request.