On 12 October, EaP RSO hosted a webinar dedicated to improving the quality of crash investigation and crash data as part of its capacity-building programme for road safety professionals in the Eastern Partnership region. It was moderated by Emma MacLennan (EASST) and featured Dave Cliff (Global Road Safety Partnership) and Soames Job (former Head of the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility) as the guest speakers.
The technical session focused on why identifying the full range of causes behind serious crashes matters for road policing and data collection and how good crash data, combined with evidence of what works, should guide road safety decisions. The webinar was attended by over 70 participants from across the region and from partner institutions in Europe and Central Asia, which included a number of police representatives.
Emma MacLennan opened by outlining the preventable nature of road deaths and the importance of addressing their causes. She presented an example from Yerevan, Armenia where local authorities observed a significant drop in injuries and fatalities after the installation of a roundabout and pedestrian crossings. Emma challenged the notion that crashes are “accidents” or just “bad luck,” citing the development of the Haddon Matrix in the 1970s, which underpins Vision Zero and the modern Safe System approach, to demonstrate that all road death is preventable. She closed her presentation with an example of a recent crash in Turkey which raised questions concerning driver fatigue and working hours, visibility, road engineering, the absence of scene protection and emergency response. This example shows how numerous factors can impact the occurrence and outcome of the crash illustrated the situations police officers across the region regularly encounter and why gathering as much data as possible from crashes is essential to understanding causes and developing effective road safety solutions.
Dave Cliff’s intervention reinforced the value of the Safe System approach and ascribing responsibility to broader factors beyond individual blame. He also highlighted that while crash investigation for each minor crash is not possible, road policing should focus on high-quality investigation, accurate reporting and data collection for all fatal and serious injury crashes as these incidents offer the greatest opportunity to identify systemic failures. He presented one case study from New Zealand as a demonstration in analysing crash factors and another covering police injury reporting to highlight the importance of robust police policies in creating an accurate picture of road trauma.
Soames Job addressed the problems of adopting an “all or nothing” approach to road safety data and specified that interventions must rest on both data and evidence. He gave the example of drink-driving corrective courses, which are a response to the number of inebriated driving offences but have proven to be ineffective in changing driver behaviour in comparison to enforcement. He drew attention to several publications, including the World Bank’s Guide for Road Safety Interventions, which present evidence of road safety improvement measures that work and those that do not, and stressed to participants the need to abandon outdated methods that are not supported by evidence. Soames then highlighted how crash data can be used effectively to reform driver behaviour, improve road and vehicle design and stop speeding.
The session finished with a Q&A discussion in which the speakers answered questions regarding artificial intelligence, sharing data and government inaction.
