Some of you are probably looking at the vehicle and wondering whether it has ESC (it looks like a Mitsubishi Triton from around the 2010 to 2014 era, so there is a fair chance it does not).
Some of you are probably looking at the pavement and wondering what the skid resistance is like.
Some of you are probably looking at the curve and thinking about the speed environment, the radius, the advisory speed, and whether the curve is communicating enough to the driver.
Some of you are probably wondering about the roadside. What was the batter slope? Should it be traversable? How much did it contribute to the rollover? Should there have been a barrier? Or could the roadside have been made more forgiving
Some of you are probably thinking about the speed limit. Is it appropriate for this road type, this alignment, and this roadside environment?
Some of you are probably thinking about the driver. What led to that overtaking decision? What pressures, behaviours, habits, expectations, or system settings made that manoeuvre feel acceptable in that moment?
Some of you are probably wondering what enforcement could do here. Could this be addressed through policing, cameras, or other compliance measures?
And some of you are probably thinking about all of these things at once.
Good.
That’s how we should be thinking about road trauma. Not as a single failure. Not as one bad decision. Not as one missing treatment, but as a system where vehicle safety, road surface, road geometry, roadside design, speed, human behaviour, enforcement, and policy all work together to lessen the likelihood of crashes but manage the energy of those that still happen.
———-
Follow Safe System Solutions Pty Ltd on LinkedIn for more updates and road safety industry news.