Look into the causes behind road accidents
Road safety companies are looking into the causes of road accidents in the hopes on lowering the amount that take place.
Calls are being made for better investigation into road accident causes, rather than just looking at who is to blame for causing them.
This call has been made by Professor Stephen Glaister of the RAC Foundation.
It was also made to coincide with the launch of a publication named 'Transport Safety: Is The Law An Ass?' by Dr Chris Elliot.
Professor Stephen Glaister said: "Historically road accidents are analysed by individual police forces with the emphasis placed on finding out if anyone has broken the law. Identifying the underlying causes of crashes seems to be of secondary importance."
"We've been locking up drivers for a century and yet motorists still die in their thousands on the roads each year. The focus on solely penalising individuals rather than also identifying systemic safety failings is a serious flaw in current transport policy. Road safety should be driven by prevention as well as punishment."
Look at the bigger picture
Professor Glaister added: "If a lorry smashes into a queue of stationary traffic killing several people attention is concentrated on why the driver failed to spot the obstacle ahead. Whilst this is important, perhaps the bigger questions are; why was the traffic at a standstill in the first place, and how can vehicles be kept moving in the future to avoid repetitions?"
It is believed that if a similar organisation to the HSE at work was set up for policing motoring accidents, many lives and serious personal injuries could be prevented by dealing with the cause rather than picking out who to blame.
Along these lines, an innovative safety system which could help reduce the number of road accidents, is being developed which constantly monitors the driver and alerts them if it thinks they are becoming fatigued.
Some estimates claim that around 25 per cent of fatal road traffic accidents could be caused by driver fatigue, with some surveys blaming it for more serious road accidents than drunk drivers.
The system, known as Attention Assist, is being developed by Daimler engineers, works by monitoring the driver's individual typical driving behaviours.
It measures the steering behaviours of the driver precisely, noting when a driver stops making regular little steering corrections and replaces them with a long delay before a more vigorous steering correction indicating the onset of fatigue.
Attention Assist system
If Attention Assist believes that fatigue is setting in it emits an alarm and will illuminate a symbol on the instrument panel, probably a coffee cup indicating that the driver should take a coffee break or stop and rest.
Other driver reactions measured are speed and its longitudinal and transverse acceleration, activation of direction indicators, the level of depression on the accelerator or brake pedals, along with the operation of the stereo, sat-nav or phone system if fitted.
Attention Assist also takes in to consideration the vehicles ambient surroundings measuring the possible influence of wind, and bumps in the road that may affect the driver's reactions. During tests for the system, drivers were required to drive for four hours without music or talking and asked how they felt, and to push a button every 20 minutes.
In the final hour the drivers reported feeling alright but the measures suggested otherwise, indicating that the Attention Assist may be more aware of driver fatigue than the driver themselves.
If the Attention Assist system is successfully introduced into all vehicles, the rate of road accidents would be significantly reduced and would be a welcome step on the never ending quest for improved road safety.
Updated on 9/5/2009