Developing a Pan-European In-depth Accident Investigation Network
In-depth data describing the causes of accidents and injuries provides a major contribution to the development of new safety policies. It is essential when conducting impact assessments of existing or future safety policies and it plays a vital role when developing and evaluating technology countermeasures. There is no in-depth data available to describe the causes of accidents and injuries for Europe as a whole although earlier studies have conducted pilot investigations to develop protocols. DaCoTA will build on previous work with the intention of establishing the infrastructure for a future investigation system that will then be deployed beyond the completion of the project.
The support of EU Member States is essential for in-depth crash investigations to be conducted without compromising judicial investigations and the DaCoTA team will work with national representatives and the European Commission to identify new crash investigation teams and address any obstacles. Once established new teams will be trained in crash investigation methods and the data requirements for a Pan-European system.
In parallel policy stakeholders and other future users of the data will be consulted to identify the key research priorities and to specify areas of data to be collected. Data collection protocols will be finalised and the complete system piloted by the data collection teams. The data gathered will be entered on a new database that will be developed for future analysis of the data.