Data on road accidents which are very crucial, must be maintained in order to reduce road accidents in Sri Lanka, said Senior Lecturer, University of Moratuwa, H.R Pasindu, addressing the Workshop on Road Safety organized by the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT).
These data could be incorporated to make decisions, provides information such as the nature and magnitude of the injury which in turn would assist in improving road safety. “Data needs to be reliable and accurate, if someone dies due to a road accident that would in turn affect the national economy,” he said. A large consideration needs to be provide to the loss of economic output per fatality.
There are core quality characteristics of accident data which are relevance, completeness, accuracy, consistency and timeliness. Data such as accidents per unit length, accident rate vehicle wisely, number killed in crashes and mortality rate are the road safety evaluation matrices using accident data.
Thus, databases need to be created having all the necessary data so that adequate steps could be taken to find solutions. Data related to the reasons for the accident, climatic condition, nature of the environment, nature of the vehicle and so on can be associated with this. These databases needs to contain records related to the health of all licensed drivers so that it would be beneficial during critical situations. They should be built to suit international standards. Facilities should also be needed to gain access to the real time data as well as historical data for further analysis. These access privileges need to be given to all authorized parties which is not limited to the Sri Lanka Police. “Only the Police is not responsible, but all stakeholders for instance Road Development Authority, Meteorological Department and Insurance entities have some role to play in this,” he added. Data is a very powerful tool to make people aware of road accidents. “We have already launched an accident management system, Sri Lanka Accident Data Management System (SLADMS), with technical support and coordination from the University of Moratuwa.”
The SLADMS’s main objectives are to provide a system that is capable of recording accident data with ease, reducing delays and duplication of work. It also provides additional features like the ability to witness accident locations on google maps and to enter accident location with GPS coordinates.
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