Accident scenarios

Prioritising engineering measures requires a sound understanding of frequent accident causes. As part of the initial work carried out within RANKERS, accident causes on dual carriageway roads in 5 European countries were analysed over a period of four years. Multiple linear regression analysis helped identify four main accident scenarios prevalent on European motorways:

• Loss of car control with no reaction from the driver (long journey and/or presence of particular fatigue, heavy sleep, run-off with no action on the steering wheel);
• Loss of car control with driver reaction (reduced driver vigilance, slight drowsiness, sharp turn of the wheel);
• Rear-end collision (reduced driver vigilance and/or unexpected event, resulting in a rear-end crash);
• Lane-changing collision (reduced driver vigilance, unawareness of the vehicle presence on the side leading to lateral impact)