Crash Data
Department for Transport reveals what really causes crashes - PAY ATTENTION!
The Department for Transport has published its review of the way it categorises road crashes. System for analysing crash data date back to 1949 and in recent years different forces have collected data in different ways making collation of the facts on a national scale very difficult.
The DfT is seeking to standardise the methods used by police when reporting on accidents and to come up with a single set of categories to define the precipitating factor and then the contributory factors associated with road crashes.
The review that the DfT has published now details the different factors that it would like to see used in reporting.
Within the report though are some interesting items drawing from data collected by 13 forces in 2001. It shows the precipitating and contributory factors in over 60,000 crashes.
The key precipitating factors in crashes were failure to give way (14.6%), failure to avoid a vehicle or object in the carriageway (27.9%) and loss of control (19%).
Poor observation is key when it comes to the driver's personal contributory factors. Failure to judge another vehicle's speed (22.6%), failure to look (16.3%), looking but not seeing (19.7%) and innattention (25.8%) are the most significant factors recorded.
When it comes to driving technique, excessive speed (inappropriate speed for the situation/conditions and exceeding the speed limit) accounts for just 12.5% of recorded observations.
We recommend a browse of the stats for yourself (See page 43 of this report ). It makes interesting reading.
Thanks to Paul Smith of Safespeed for alerting us to this report
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