Welcome to Module 4.

In this module, we will look at the crash process, the importance of good
data, and how road safety engineers can break the chain of events that lead to a crash.

So, what is a road crash? The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) defines a
traffic collision as

• Occurring on a public road or travelway

• Resulting on someone being killed or injured, and

• Involving at least one moving vehicle.

It is important to remember that crashes are multi-factor events – we will look at it closer later in
this video.

There are three main types of crashes:

Single-vehicle crashes.

Vehicle to vehicle crashes which are divided into:

- Head-on.

- Side on.

- Rear-end.

And Vehicle to vulnerable road user crashes.

Remember – these account for more than half of all fatalities on the world’s roads.

Single-vehicle crashes usually involve:

loss of control,

running off the road, with injuries caused by

- sudden impact with rigid objects at the roadside,

- or roll-over of the vehicle.

Head-on vehicle crashes, usually result from overtaking or loss of control of the vehicle.

Single vehicle and head-on crashes occur more often in rural locations because there are more
opportunities for high speeds and overtaking.

Side-on crashes usually occur with vehicles turning at intersections, out of or into a side road or
access.

Rear-end (shunt) crashes usually occur with a vehicle waiting to turn at an intersection or stopped at
a pedestrian crossing.

Side-on and rear-end crashes tend to occur more often in urban locations, with more intersections
and stationary vehicles.

Vulnerable road user injuries (including injuries to people on powered two-wheelers) usually happen
when hit by a motor vehicle.

These occur more often in urban areas – towns and villages.

Human factors. People make mistakes.

Vehicle factors

Road infrastructure and environment factors, the road infrastructure, but also (for example)
weather.

Crashes are never caused by just one factor.

Let’s look at the story of a crash.

A car has run off a road, at a sharp bend, down a steep embankment, and hit a tree, in a rural
location at night.

The crashed car was not seen for 3 hours.

The ambulance arrived 1 hour later, treated the injured “at the scene”, then delivered the casualties
to the hospital, but the passenger had already died.

Pause the video for a few minutes and try to answer these questions: What caused the crash (which
could be prevented)? How could the forces of impact have been reduced? And most importantly in a
Safe System: How could the fatality and injuries have been prevented?

So, when the police arrived, they found that:

• the driver had been driving too fast.

• The driver had a high alcohol content in his blood test.

• The driver and passenger were not wearing seatbelts.

The Police recorded the “cause” as “speeding compounded by alcohol.”

Then Vehicle engineers inspected the vehicle and found problems with:

- brakes,

- steering,

- headlights,

- seatbelts.

After that, highway engineers inspected the site and observed that:

The sharp bend was at the end of a long straight section.

There was no "Curve" warning sign (it was damaged previously and not replaced).

There were no edge line markings on that road, nor tactile edge lines road studs which might have
alerted the driver.

Centreline markings had faded, due to poor quality of paint.

Embankment height was 3.5m high, side slope 1:2. There were no crash barriers at that location.

The tree was 5m from near the edge of the traffic lane, with no crash protection.
The emergency services were not aware of the crash for 3 hours.

They took 1 hour to arrive with medical help.

Earlier may have avoided the fatality.

These factors can be described as a chain of events, which all contributed to the crash and its
severity.

If just one of these factors in the chain had been changed, would the chain have been broken?
Would the crash have happened, or the injuries reduced been avoided if we had:

Better driver behaviour.

Better vehicle design and maintenance.

Better police enforcement for both driving and vehicle condition.

Better emergency services, facilities and responses.

Most crucially, better road design and maintenance can prevent death and injury despite other
factors. Forgiving road design is an essential part of a safe system.

In this module, we will also look at another case study – "Jane's Story" – a fictitious scenario to
explain the chain of events that leads to a crash.

It was developed by Dr Barbara Sabey from Transport Research Laboratory in the UK and first used
in the 1980s.

Please watch it once you have finished this video.

In summary, in this module, we learned that

According to the UNECE, a crash involves at least one motor vehicle and results in death and/or
injury.

There are three main types of crashes: single-vehicle crash, vehicle to a vehicle crash and vehicle to
vulnerable road user crash.

Crashes are multi-factor events. There are three main types of contributing factors to a crash:
human factors, vehicle factors, road infrastructure and environmental factors.

Crashes are never caused by just one factor.

Avoiding road death and injury is at the heart of the Safe System.

Road Engineers can provide a self-explaining road that helps avoid drivers’ mistakes. By providing
good quality signing, road markings and surfacing, we can often break the chain of events that lead
to a crash.

Forgiving road design aims to prevent death and injury when a crash occurs. We will hear more
about this in later modules.

That concludes this Module on Crash Causation.

In the next module, we will look at Road Safety Engineering Measures of Speed Management.