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Abstract
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Heavy vehicle crashes occur regularly resulting in death and serious injury, having enormous personal and economic impacts. Crash investigations have not been completed to a level that would identify why the crash has occurred with a number of investigations blaming the driver or not being completed in sufficient detail for the heavy vehicle transport industry to make informed recommendations to mitigate future crash risk.
This study consisted of conducting semi-structured interviews of 20 investigators who had a combined total of 624 years of investigative experiences attained from policing, regulatory and private industries. The investigators were asked to describe the types of investigations they had conducted, the investigative methods they used, what was the intent of their investigation and the level of detail and information they captured in their investigations, just to name a few. The semi-structured interviews identified key themes, the most significant being that investigations focused on blaming the driver, no specific investigation method was used, no formal systemic investigation training was provided and investigators were trained on the job. Additionally, investigators lacked experience, knowledge and understanding of the heavy vehicle transport industry and investigation biases were evident that affected investigation outcomes.
The semi-structured interview results identified why heavy vehicle drivers were blamed for crashes and identified several failings in the investigative method and process. A number of recommendations were made to suggest improvements to the industry. This included the need to implement a national heavy vehicle crash investigation agency that used a consistent systematic investigative methodology.
Keywords: Heavy Vehicle, Blame, Investigations, Crashes, Transport
Language: en |