A multiple case study if work-related road traffic collisions.

Author(s)
Clarke, D.D. Ward, P. Truman, W. & Bartle, C.
Year
Abstract

Findings related to 2111 police case reports involving work-related road traffic accidents from three English Midland police forces are reported. Nearly 90% of the sample was found to contain six main classes of vehicle being used in a work-related capacity. These were company cars, vans / pickup trucks, lorries / large goods vehicles (LGV), buses / public commercial vehicles (PCV), taxis / minicabs and emergency vehicles. Work-related drivers exhibited an elevated blameworthiness ratio for lorry / LGV, van/pickup and company cars whereas emergency vehicles, taxi / minicab and bus / PCV showed decreased blameworthiness. LGVs were more likely than other vehicle groups to be involved in fatal and serious accidents. In accidents where LGV drivers are considered to blame, poor observation and distraction were cited as causes. There was evidence of fatigue or illness in a fifth of fatal accidents caused by LGV drivers. About a quarter of fatalities involved LGV drivers breaking the speed limit. Two fatalities were caused by overloading or insecure loads. However in over half of fatal LGV accidents, the LGV driver was not to blame. Company car drivers and emergency vehicle drivers were also likely to cause fatal accidents. Over half of company car fatality accidents involved excessive speed on the part of the driver and with emergency vehicles the majority of fatality accidents involved excess speed. In half of emergency vehicle fatality accidents, another driver had also contributed to the accident in some way. An explanatory factors list with 64 items was used to categorise each accident in the sample and results are given for each category of driver. Only 2.6% of the whole sample showed fatigue as a possible causal factor. Causal vehicle defects were found in 1.5% of accidents. Twenty-one accidents related to personnel working on or near the road area also discussed. A list of 23 possible behavioural strategies fro avoiding typical accidents was drawn up using established texts and the data from this study. For the covering abstract see ITRD E157497

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Publication

Library number
C 43729 (In: C 43716 [electronic version only]) /80 /83 / ITRD E157507
Source

In: Behavioural research in road safety 2005 : proceedings of the fifteenth seminar on behavioural research in road safety, November 2005, p. 104-118

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This publication is one of our other publications, and part of our extensive collection of road safety literature, that also includes the SWOV publications.