Evaluation of road traffic accidents in Germany: need of data and analysis

The accident situation on streets of Europe is very high furthermore. In 2007 42.453 peopledied on EU27 roads. In Germany number of killed person on streets is still 4.949.The aim that EU gives itself in white paper in 2001(halve number of trafficdead person till 2010) has not been reached. In 2010 important points are put for road work. The European committee has initiated with different events Stakeholder process for Road Safety action programmes 2011 - 2020. The Federal Government in Germany also wants to provide a new road programme. To promote best practise into that process Germany could give a successful example: the method of accident investigation, that is suitable to imitation internationally. Accidents do not only result from mistakes made by humans using road - they can also be caused by factors such as faults in road environment (e.g. narrow bend, missing barrier, etc.). Many of those faults have no repercussions because of safety inherent in road-traffic system. That allowance comes into play when weather, road or traffic conditions are poor or when a vehicle is poorly equipped. However, if several of these risk factors occur at once (e.g. night time, rain, poor road markings and worn tyres), a moment's inattentiveness is often enough to cause an accident. Consequently, accidents are often found to be due to a combination of several causes, not one single cause. The special about frequent accident sites (FAS) is prevalence of local contributing factors. These factors arise from aspects such as faults in alignment, intersection layouts, signing, road markings or traffic devices. If one accident- inducing factor in road environment can be isolated, described and then remedied, safety at that site will increase. The result will be fewer and/or less severe accidents. So a large number of causes doesn't mean a large number of measures is required. Since several factors at site in question could have an accident-inducing effect, several measures may be suitable but only one of them needs to be selected. It is Accident Committees' task to devote their efforts to eliminating FAS. Part of this work is also to make importance of their work clear to others. The German government has required locally based accident committees since 1971. More than 500 of these city- and county-committees exist, and they are required to meet at least twice a year. The multidisciplinary committee typically are composed of seven or eight members or including police officers and representatives of road construction sector and traffic authorities. The legislative requirement to have these committees has in formalized and made commonplace process of multidisciplinary local analysis in Germany. Accident Committees are one important part of a network road management.