The NTRO (previously known as ARRB) has become a supporter of blameless crash investigations, which ensure that lessons can be learnt from every crash and near miss on Australian roads.
According to the Transport Accident Commission, if no changes are made to the current road trauma climate, another 2500 people are expected to die over the next 10 years, with another 50,000 to be hospitalised with life-threatening injuries.
The roads and infrastructure sectors have recognised the need to make a change. The development of new technology and techniques to combat escalating road trauma statistics has been led by companies such as the NTRO.
The Australian Road Research Board (ARRB), now the NTRO (National Transport Research Organisation), has been a pioneer in the improvement of current and new technologies for Australian roads.
Safety is embedded into the operations of the company across both Australia and New Zealand. From road safety audits to road design and traffic engineering, the company has a firm expertise in delivering suitable solutions for metropolitan and regional roads nation-wide.
This expertise has enabled the NTRO to identify a gap in the sector’s offerings, particularly when it comes to road crash investigations.
“The ‘no-blame’ crash investigation method looks at road crashes from a broad context of what factors have contributed to both the cause and the severity of the outcome,” says David McTiernan, National Discipline Lead – Transport Safety.
“As opposed to a more traditional crash investigation process, which is really about identifying from a legal perspective who caused the crash.”
The no-blame investigation approach, what the NTRO also refers to as the ‘safe system approach’ incorporates factors such as the road, the vehicle, the environment, the driver and more to determine what contributed to an incident.
“We know that we can’t stop every crash on the road network, but if we can convert some of those serious crashes into less severe outcomes that would be great. We need to take a holistic view into all of the contributing factors,” McTiernan says.
“It informs our application and informs our knowledge of where risk exists. Then we’re better set up to mitigate that risk wherever it may be across road infrastructure. It’s part of making our network safer.”
Gavin Lennon, Senior Technology Leader, Safer Smarter Infrastructure says no-blame crash investigations differ from official police crash investigations. It aims to provide long-term learnings for future infrastructure developments, instead of identifying the guilty party.
“Obviously someone’s at fault in a car crash and we need to find who’s at fault. But as a society, we don’t learn from the punishment of one individual,” Lennon says. “The blameless approach really looks at a systematic investigation, which then allows us to build on our knowledge and processes.
“We look at the aspects that we can control to some degree, like the road environment and the infrastructure around it. We need to look at how we can have a greater understanding of how people interact with that infrastructure in order to make it safer.
“That way we can enact change for the future, to encourage improvements like better driving habits.”
Unlike crashes in the aviation and rail transport industries, not every incident and near miss on Australian roads is investigated. As such, McTiernan believes embedding no-blame crash investigations is the first step.
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“Currently, it’s primarily seen as a research function when it comes to road incidents,” he says. “Investigations for other transport modes already incorporate a similar structure to the no-blame system, with aviation being the most advanced at this stage.
“These types of investigations do not absolve the human element at all. It’s also not trying to usurp police investigations and the process that society needs to uphold the law. It’s about learning, so we can have a better road transport system in the future.”
Lennon – himself a former civilian member of the police force – concurs, saying that while adoption will take time, the results will be “well worth it” in the long run. He says education and training will also play a key role.
“One of the major differences between these modes is the volume of traffic-related crashes, which is more significant than rail for example,” he says. “I think some people can be daunted by the thought of investigating and learning from every incident.
“At the end of the day, the police attend to just about every crash, from property damage to fatalities. So we need to train and educate people who attend these scenes to gather the right information. Then we can look at how we collect that information and how we can use it.”
McTiernan adds that such a system will have meaningful benefits for local governments and road authorities.
“Road managers and road agencies ultimately have this potential liability, so it would be invaluable for them to be made aware of how to manage risks on their network through this crash investigation process,” he says.
“If they could work in parallel with the police to understand what’s going on, they’re going to be better equipped to manage these risks. Engineers need to be trained in the whole process, not just how to maintain or design roads.
“But also, what happens when something goes wrong; to look at these incidents from a risk management perspective and ask themselves ‘right, these are the contributing factors across that vehicle, road, person, space etc’, to implement a better response.”
Learnings from using these investigations is already leading to infrastructure improvements. One such example is the installation of traffic lighting on footpaths, ensuring that those who are on their phones, or otherwise distracted, are able to be aware of their surroundings. The installation of this technology is expected to reduce the number of crashes within the vicinity.
But what are the first steps to embedding a process such as no-blame crash investigations? McTiernan says taking a broad approach is key.
“We really need to embed safe system approach thinking more broadly, starting with the community’s understanding and then a flow on to other stakeholders such as the police,” he says.
“If they have an awareness of their role in crash prevention, not just crash responses, they can play a part in claiming some of that information.”
The future
Both McTiernan and Lennon believe the dawn of wider AI (Artificial Intelligence) and autonomous vehicle use will present a challenge to the road network. All the more reason why the use of a no-blame crash investigation process will be so important, they say.
“We need to take a load off the network,” McTiernan says. “Managing traffic throughput can sometimes be in conflict with road safety objective. We don’t want to limit people’s movement and we don’t want to create congestion.
“That’s why an acceptance is so important not just in high level government agencies, but also the community. I think this is going to be even more important going into the future as autonomous vehicles come on board.”
The NTRO is helping to introduce these systems to not only the road network, but also industries where vehicles are used on a daily basis, such as mining and more. NTRO is also developing in the AI space.
“We’re looking at AI capabilities to assist with coding through mass quantities of data, so that we can more efficiently, and more cost effectively, provide road practitioners with a much better understanding of where the problems are on the network,” McTiernan says. “With AI we can have wider and more frequent rollouts.”
This article was originally published in the June edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.