Pilot Study: Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition- Indepth

Important results from the project

The main aim of the project was to describe an approach where the advantages of a large database providing limited information per case could be combined with detailed pre-crash and crash course information, currently only available in Trafikverkets In-depth database, for fatal accidents. The goal was to identify a process where the level of detail in the Swedish Transport Administration´s fatality studies could be applied to traffic accidents with moderate to fatal injuries.

Expected long term effects

The project provided a pilot database structure that has been tested with manual recoding of existing STRADA and Trafikverket Djupstudiedata. Parallel to this, computer scripts that can recode some of the existing data have been developed. The recoding confirms that existing data sources capture some, but not all, of the data needed to provide analyzes of the effectiveness of road safety systems. Some of the data needed is collected in the investigations of fatal personal accidents, and is proposed to be improved with crash reconstructions that quantify the severity of the crash.

Approach and implementation

The project used the existing database elements in STRADA, and created a new structure that could import data from existing STRADA and Trafikverket sources. This database was designed to include information from crash reconstructions that are not yet available in Swedish databases. The pilot database was tested with a selection of STRADA cases and the Swedish Transport Administration´s in-depth database. The project team used cases from the various sources into a new database. Automatic analysis tools were developed to mass process data from existing databases into the new format.