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Road Safety
Crash
Investigations
It is the job of the Traffic Management
and Road Safety Unit to assess automobile crashes.
We are trying to identify common factors that cause
crashes which we can then use to design physical measures in the
highway that will reduce the number of crashes.
It all begins with the crash itself. Often the police will be
called to a road traffic crash to assess how serious the incident
is. If the crash caused any injury it will be recorded on an
official form known as the Stats 19. If there are no casualties,
the police will record but only for insurance purposes.
In London, this information is passed from the Metropolitan Police
to the London Accident Analysis Unit, now part of the Greater
London Authority, who in turn, compile it annually for use by each
individual London borough.
The Traffic Management and Road Safety Unit becomes part
of the process at this stage. Our responsibility is to analyse
these accidents, both in terms of their location and the type of
road user that is being injured. Using this information we can see
which locations, areas and routes in the borough have a higher than
average number of casualties compared to similar places in the
borough.
Each year, we analyse all crashes that have occurred in the
borough and submit a bid to the local area Government Office. This
bid prioritises the crash sites in terms of the accident benefits.
This document then forms our work programme for the following
year.
Currently, the Traffic Management and Road Safety Unit receives
approximately £500k a year to resolve road traffic casualty
problems in Newham. Although this sounds like a lot of money, the
measures that we implement tend to be expensive with a dozen or so
schemes being completed each year. |