Road unsafety questions are complex issues, involving both physical (infrastructure, environment, traffic), mechanical (vehicles) and human interacting elements (users), in a juridical and regulatory, institutional, economical and social background. Road safety research requires the availability of data concerning all of those elements, especially on accidents, mobility and various users behaviours. Despite the extended use of the BAAC (Bulletins of Analysis of Road Injury Accidents – Bulletins d’Analyse des Accidents Corporels de la Circulation) or the accident reports, road safety research must rely on specific data. As research is developing, databases have been set up, which are managed in a permanent, periodical or punctual way. There are other data sources which could be useful for research but they are not operated for various reasons : juridical, administrative, economical locks, data considered as too exogeneous for the road safety issue, etc. Moreover, some data, though essential for the knowledge of road unsafety are not collected. To satisfy the new needs of research data and to improve, to integrate and to perpetuate the existing information, significant means will have to be implemented, which justifies the achievement of a preliminary study. (Author/publisher)
Abstract