Join Road Safety Experts, Dr John Fletcher and Tony Mathew as they discuss how the crash data system in Himachal Pradesh was implemented successfully. TRL are now working on a major project to trial safety approaches in the State – the crash data will form the basis for this undertaking. Tony will talk through the setup project and give specific insights and learnings derived from analysing the crash data. John will talk about how the data can lead directly to the formulation of more effective, targeted Safe System based strategies and actions.
Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) are still lacking knowledge of effective safety countermeasures which work for their road conditions and user patterns. This is despite a large number of donor supported road safety pilot corridor projects funded to date. This is in major part due a lack of good quality data and sustainable crash data systems in LMICs. This needs to be major aim of the UN Safe System ‘management pillar’ in all countries and also a focus for the Regional Road Safety Observatories being developed currently. Ultimately, investing to setup stable crash data systems will save both lives and money; providing evidence for road safety stakeholders to invest where there is the maximum scope for reducing KSI’s per dollar spent rather than just ‘guestimating’ in the worst case scenario.
In 2015, Himachal Pradesh implemented TRL’s Road Crash Data Management System, iMAAP; going from paper to a cloud hosted system and crash data collection using a mobile app. This provided more accurate data with better detail, giving access to records in near real time. Himachal Pradesh now has the capability to analyse road crashes comprehensively, repeatably and more rapidly. This is a major advantage for organising efforts to reduce Killed and Seriously Injured casualties (KSIs) which affect all states and countries increasingly as they develop economically.
