diff --git a/R/read.R b/R/read.R
index 7bdfe3b..de8d2f0 100644
--- a/R/read.R
+++ b/R/read.R
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ read_collisions = function(year = NULL,
   }
   # read the data in
   suppressWarnings({
-    ac = readr::read_csv(path)
+    ac = readr::read_csv(path, col_types = readr::cols(!!!col_types))
   })
 
   if(format)
@@ -169,5 +169,29 @@ read_ve_ca = function(path) {
 
 read_null = function(path, ...) {
   if(is.null(path)) return(NULL)
-  readr::read_csv(path, ...)
+  readr::read_csv(path, col_types = readr::cols(!!!col_types), ...)
 }
+
+# possibly in utils
+# Convert the 'type' column to readr's col_type format
+convert_to_col_type <- function(type) {
+  switch(type,
+         character = readr::col_character(),
+         numeric = readr::col_double(),
+         integer = readr::col_integer(),
+         logical = readr::col_logical(),
+         date = readr::col_date(),
+         datetime = readr::col_datetime(),
+         readr::col_guess())
+}
+
+data("stats19_variables", package = "stats19")
+
+# Create a named list of column types
+unique_vars = unique(stats19_variables$variable)
+unique_types = sapply(unique_vars, function(v) {
+  type = stats19_variables$type[stats19_variables$variable == v][1]
+  convert_to_col_type(type)
+})
+
+col_types = setNames(unique_types, unique_vars)
diff --git a/data-raw/stats19_variables.csv b/data-raw/stats19_variables.csv
index 1070cfc..6daa074 100644
--- a/data-raw/stats19_variables.csv
+++ b/data-raw/stats19_variables.csv
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ Casualty,accident_index,unique value for each accident. The accident_index combi
 Casualty,accident_reference,"In year id used by the police to reference a collision. It is not unique outside of the year, use accident_index for linking to other years",accident_reference,character
 Casualty,accident_year,NA,accident_year,numeric
 Casualty,age_band_of_casualty,NA,age_band_of_casualty,character
-Casualty,age_of_casualty,NA,age_of_casualty,character
+Casualty,age_of_casualty,NA,age_of_casualty,numeric
 Casualty,bus_or_coach_passenger,NA,bus_or_coach_passenger,character
 Casualty,car_passenger,NA,car_passenger,character
 Casualty,casualty_class,NA,casualty_class,character
@@ -73,8 +73,8 @@ Vehicle,accident_index,unique value for each accident. The accident_index combin
 Vehicle,accident_reference,"In year id used by the police to reference a collision. It is not unique outside of the year, use accident_index for linking to other years",accident_reference,character
 Vehicle,accident_year,NA,accident_year,numeric
 Vehicle,age_band_of_driver,NA,age_band_of_driver,character
-Vehicle,age_of_driver,NA,age_of_driver,character
-Vehicle,age_of_vehicle,NA,age_of_vehicle,character
+Vehicle,age_of_driver,NA,age_of_driver,numeric
+Vehicle,age_of_vehicle,NA,age_of_vehicle,numeric
 Vehicle,driver_home_area_type,field introduced in 1999,driver_home_area_type,character
 Vehicle,driver_imd_decile,field introduced in 2016,driver_imd_decile,character
 Vehicle,engine_capacity_cc,NA,engine_capacity_cc,character
diff --git a/data/stats19_variables.rda b/data/stats19_variables.rda
index ac2ff5c..c6170dc 100644
Binary files a/data/stats19_variables.rda and b/data/stats19_variables.rda differ