SWOV homepage
Nederlands  
SWOV is the Dutch national road safety research institute. It is SWOV's task to contribute to improving road safety through scientific research.

SWOV fact sheets

SWOV publishes fact sheets on a wide range of road safety subjects.
To the fact sheets.

SWOV Library

In the Netherlands the SWOV library is the national centre for road safety literature. Consult the online catalogue for recent publications

ERSO

Visit ERSO for international road safety information

Knowledge base

SWOV begins pilot in-depth study of road traffic crashes

 

On 1 November 2008, SWOV began a three-year pilot in-depth study of road traffic crashes. Several in-depth studies are used to investigate the added value of this type of research for acquiring more road safety knowledge and for road safety policy. The Ministry of Transport has given SWOV an extra subsidy to carry out this pilot study.

 

An important characteristic of the SWOV in-depth studies is that each of them will be aimed at a specific type of traffic crash. In each in-depth study a multidisciplinary research team will investigate which factors have contributed to a crash of a certain type occurring and the outcome of this type of crash. The course of the crash process will be investigated thoroughly: which road users were involved in the crash, where did they come from, where were they going to, what did they observe and how did they react, how did others respond, and what was the role of the vehicles and the road environment.

 

The information that is obtained will then be used to investigate where and at which point in time things started going wrong, why it went wrong, how this can be prevented in future, and how the severity of the outcome can be limited. This will provide leads for which measures can be taken to prevent future similar crashes or to reduce the injury severity of that specific crash type.

 

SWOV's research team will be operational in the middle of 2009. The first months of the pilot will be used to set up the organization and to make the necessary arrangements with incident rooms, police, ambulance services and hospitals.