Road accident investigation

There is a wide range of accident investigation procedures and protocols in place across Europe for investigating road accidents. However, as countries work towards meeting both their own road safety targets and those set by the European Commission, it might be possible that these existing investigations are no longer entirely suited to facilitating the decision making processes of road safety policy-makers or practitioners. Current practices for dealing with road accidents are quite different from those for aviation, rail and maritime accidents, as is the legislative framework regarding such investigations. Currently no comparable requirements or clearly formulated objectives exist for the organisation of transparent and independent road accident investigation.

The report 'Recommendations for Transparent and Independent Road Accident Investigation' aims to address this by presenting a set of recommendations for transparent and independent accident investigation processes. These recommendations were derived from a thorough review of a range of accident investigation procedures, and from discussing a set of draft recommendations in a special European workshop. A special case of road safety accident investigation is major accident investigation. The report 'Recommendations for Transparent and Independent Road Accident Investigation' also discusses the extra considerations for this particular type of investigation.

The Accident and Injury Database Glossary offers data variables collected in both the report Fatal data methodology development and the report In-depth accident causation data study methodology development.