Licensed to skill: contributory factors in road accidents

Driver and rider error is the biggest contributory factor in both deaths and serious injuries on our roads today.

This report looks at five years’ worth of accident data recorded by the police and analyses the different contributory factors.

Human error factors including ‘loss of control’, ‘failed to look properly’, and ‘poor turn or manoeuvre’, accounted for 65 per cent of fatal, 61 per cent of serious and 68 per cent of slight accidents. Failed to look is the single greatest cause of crashes and this is consistent across all age groups. It is clear that only driver training can really address the key reasons that people crash.