Towards an Accident Investigation Branch for Roads?

The purpose of this paper is, in part, to endorse the case for thinking again about whether an accident investigation branch (AIB) – of some kind – is required for roads, but in particular to propose options for how the establishment of such a unit could be put into effect swiftly and effectively as a way of proving the concept.

The RAC Foundation’s view is that the ‘learning loop’ for road safety – the backbone of good risk management through which experience is reviewed, changes implemented and their success monitored – is both incomplete and inchoate. Most of its elements are in place, but key connections are missing.

The paper argues that unless something different is done, it is very hard to see how the stubbornly stable number of deaths occurring year after year on our roads can be reset on the downward trajectory that we all want to see.

In the meantime, the impression left in the public mind will be that the zero-tolerance attitude to death and serious injury that is adopted when it comes to travel by rail, air and sea stands in stark contrast to a somewhat studied indifference to the horrific toll of death and serious injury on our roads – a price that we are, apparently, as a society willing to pay.