Car Accidents > News
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Foundation Calls For Specialist Unit To Probe UK Road Accidents
Fri, 22 May 2009

The RAC Foundation has called for a fundamental review of the way road accidents are investigated in an effort to prevent future road deaths.

The group said a specialist investigation body should be established to examine road crashes in similar detail to rail, air and maritime incidents as police investigations are too focused on criminal procedures to fully consider safety ramifications.

According to the research organisation, the number of road deaths far outstrip those seen for planes, trains and boats despite dramatic improvements in road safety and a long-term decline in vehicle-related accidents .

Nearly 37,000 people have been killed on Britain's roads over the past 11 years compared to 337 in air crashes, 114 in rail accidents and 53 in UK territorial waters.

But despite these figures, the Foundation said there was no specialist body, equivalent to the air, rail and marine accident investigation branches, to investigate road accidents in the UK.

RAC director 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."

However, the RAC's findings have been dismissed by the Department for Transport, which argued that a separate road accident investigation branch would "duplicate" the work of the police .
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.