TABLE OF CONTENTS There are three factors that result in accidents:
road and environment deficiencies;
road user errors (human factors);
vehicle defects.
Road and environment deficiencies account on their own for only 2% of all accidents but in combination with road user errors account for slightly less than 20%. Human factors on their own account for 75% of accidents.
Typical road and environment deficiencies are those which provide misleading visual information, or insufficient or unclear information to the road user. Only occasionally accidents are caused solely by bad design.
Human factors include excessive speed for the conditions, failing to give way, improperly overtaking or following too close and general misjudgement by both driver and pedestrian.
The two basic types of road accident, which by definition have to involve a vehicle, are:
personal injury;
damage only.
A personal injury accident (PIA) is an accident involving an injury. The PIA refers to the accident as the event, and may involve several vehicles and several casualties (persons injured). The accident must occur in the public highway (including footways) and become known to the police within 30 days of its occurrence. The vehicle need not be moving and it need not be in collision with anything.
A casualty is a person killed or injured in an accident. Casualties are subdivided into killed, seriously injured and slightly injured. The definitions for these three subdivisions of severity are:
Killed: A casualty who dies within 30 days of the accident...
