Publication

Inattention or distraction among drivers are frequent causes of intersection crashes and of collisions between bicycles and motorized vehicles. This is shown by analyses of data from in-depth studies of fatal road crashes for the years 2005-2007, collected by crash investigation teams of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. The intersection crashes that were analysed included cases involving at least one car, and in the majority of crashes the other party was either a heavy vehicle or a motorcycle; i.e., most fatal intersection crashes are collisions between vehicles with a large mass difference. The most frequent course of events was a car driver turning left before an oncoming vehicle that was not observed or observed too late. High speed combined with expectancies that the turning driver would yield, in some cases contributed to the failure of an avoidance manoeuvre on the part of the driver going straight. In the bicycle crashes there were many cases where the car driver had not seen the bicyclist before the crash, either due to inattention and low expectancy of bicycle traffic, or to sight obstacles in the vehicle or in the road environment. The crashes were analysed by using the "Driver Reliability and Error Analysis Method" (DREAM), and the analyses revealed som needs for improvement in road crash data collection and causation analyses.