The development of a European fatal accident database
Journal article, 2010

A lack of representative European accident data to aid the development of safety policy, regulation and technological advancement is a major obstacle in the European Union. Data are needed to assess the performance of road and vehicle safety and also to support the development of further actions by stakeholders. A recent analysis conducted by the European Transport Safety Council identified that there was no single system in place that could meet all of the needs and that there were major gaps including in-depth crash causation information. This paper describes the process of developing a data collection and analysis system designed to partly fill these gaps. A project team with members from seven countries was set up to devise appropriate variable lists to collect fatal crash data, using retrospective detailed police reports (n = 1300), under the following topic levels: accident, road environment, vehicle and road user. The typical level of detail recorded was a minimum of 150 variables for each accident. The project will enable multidisciplinary information on the circumstances of fatal crashes to be interpreted to provide information on a range of causal factors and events surrounding the collisions. This has major applications in the areas of active safety systems, infrastructure and road safety, as well as for tailoring behavioural interventions.

European fatal crash database

crash causation

Author

Andrew Morris

Charlotte Brace

Steven Reed

Helen Fagerlind

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Vehicle Safety

Karolina Björkman

Chalmers, Applied Mechanics, Vehicle Safety

Michael Jaensch

Dietmar Otte

Gilles Vallet

Lindsay Cant

Gabriele Giustiniani

Kalle Parkkari

Ernst Verschragen

Boudewijn Hoogvelt

International Journal of Crashworthiness

1358-8265 (ISSN) 17542111 (eISSN)

Vol. 15 2 201-209

Areas of Advance

Transport

Subject Categories

Vehicle Engineering

DOI

10.1080/13588260903102476

More information

Created

10/7/2017