The UK's On the Spot (OTS) accident data collection project started in 2000 and continues to investigate 500 crashes per year. Investigations are undertaken minutes after the collision has occurred in order to gather all the perishable information. At the time of writing, over 3,200 crashes involving all road users and all injury severities have been examined. The OTS database provides a unique insight into the prevailing factors that have been seen to cause crashes and the associated human injuries and vehicle and infrastructure damage that have been witnessed by the crash investigation teams. This paper gives a brief overview of the project and highlights the structure and composition of the database. The objective of the paper is to highlight that the OTS study has now collected enough in-depth data to offer the potential both to identify common crash characteristics and to address complex research questions concerning the causes and nature of road traffic accidents. To demonstrate this potential, new data are presented on the pre- and post-crash circumstances of a sample of 193 pedestrian crashes. Recent work highlighting the risk of pedestrian injury with respect to the car impact speed and a summary of the crash causation factors is included. The information OTS provides can be used to begin to outline the potential effectiveness or scope of future crash prevention strategies and/or technologies. For the covering abstract see ITRD E0903020.
Abstract