Highways Agency

• Traffic Incident Management Bulletin

July 2007

Introduction

Any incident/accident on the Highways Agency network can result in injuries to motorists, their passengers, pedestrians, road workers or enforcement/traffic management staff. All such incidents are the responsibility of the Police for recording and reporting purposes, however should the level of injury fall within the more serious category then the Police potentially have to carry out a more specific role.

If an incident results in fatal, potentially fatal or serious (life changing) injuries then the police are obliged to thoroughly investigate the full circumstances. Life changing injuries being those which are likely to result in a significant change of lifestyle for example the loss of a limb.

The Purpose of the Investigation

The duties of the Police at such significant incidents are to ascertain the full facts and cause of the incident. This level of investigation is not aimed at specifically apportioning blame or prosecuting individuals, but enabling the compilation of a detailed review of all the factors involved and resulting in the production of a detailed independent report.

The key recipients of information available following the investigation are the:

• Police
• Coroner
• Crown Prosecution Service
• subsequently the family of those involved
• others if deemed appropriate.

Carrying out the Investigation

The detailed investigation of the more significant incidents is carried out by specially trained Police collision investigators and completed in line with the requirements of the ACPO Road Death Investigation Manual, click on the link to be transferred to the manual.

This nationally adopted manual provides a framework for each Police Force to carry out the investigation in a broadly similar manner.

The key points being:

• Appointment of a Senior Investigating Officer (SIO)
• Incident being treated as a potential crime scene.
• Three stage Investigative Model (Pg22 of RDIM PDF 58KB) (Pre-scene, scene, post scene)
• Statement of Investigation Standard, (Pg11 of RDIM PDF 61KB) specifically that all incidents are initially treated as ‘unlawful killings’

Evidence

Unlike other crime scenes managed by the Police, incidents on the road network have significant limitations regarding the capturing and gathering of all available evidence. Inevitably there is only one opportunity for the collision investigator (CI) to capture and gather all the available evidence from the scene of an incident on a highway network. This is due to the fact that when vehicular traffic is allowed to flow again at the scene, all actual and potential evidence will be lost through the vehicular movements along that section of road surface.

Road Traffic Collisions involve the basic laws of physics including friction and momentum. As a result the investigation requires the capturing of vital information at the scene, such as:

• surface marks, such as skid marks which may be hidden by other vehicles or be some distance from the main scene.
• debris and/or vehicle final resting positions.
• vehicle and infrastructure damage
• vehicle seat positions, controls and wheels should remain unchanged unless necessary to save life.
• items such as broken tie-down straps, mobile phones and tachographs.
• positions of people on the road
• body fluids may be used to identify those involved in the collision and position them at the point of impact
• weather, road and driving conditions at the time of the collision or as soon as possible afterwards.
• measurement of the road surface skid resistance through carrying out a skid test at or as near to the incident as possible

These facts, once gathered, provide the information required to carry out a reconstruction of the incident and identify what has happened and who, if anyone, is to blame. 

Witness information is useful as support to the physical evidence but can sometimes be unreliable or just not available. The information provided by witnesses may well be factual but based on assumptions rather than scientific facts.

The CI will at first review the scene to determine the scope of the investigation. The reason for this is illustrated below:

If two vehicles collide head-on the debris field can provide useful data.

A vehicle travelling at high speed can travel several hundred metres following a collision before to coming to rest.

In order to capture all of the information effectively, a detailed electronic survey of the scene will be completed. The capturing of this information through the use of a topographical survey enables the building of a virtual scene model including the location of key evidence, for further information please see the Incident Scene Surveying Equipment article. Additional to this level of evidence are the photographs and/or video taken of the scene as well as key items collected for evidential purposes.

Vehicles involved in an incident can provide detailed information and evidence relating to the circumstances. Therefore, vehicle recovery must be carried out by approved agents to ensure continuity of evidence. Good practice necessitates the vehicles are lifted from the scene using damage free techniques. 

How you can help

The Police use the acronym MEAL as an aide memoir to what needs to be done to protect the evidence at what is potentially a crime scene.

Movement of exhibits
Evidence being obliterated
Additional material being added
Loss of evidence

Simple ways to help achieve this include:

• Scene control to minimise the number of personnel and vehicles within the scene for example using Rendezvous points, please see the link for further information.
• If on scene prior to the police then obtain details of those accessing the scene.
• With the exception of preserving life consult the SIO, if available, or a police officer prior to approaching scene.
• Being aware of delicate marks such as those in grass and go around them.
• Marking the original location of anything that had to be moved to preserve life.
• Set the traffic cordon far enough away from the main scene to allow the CI to survey all the marks.
• Remember you are working within a crime scene.

Life can only be declared extinct by a medical practitioner or qualified paramedic regardless of how severe the injuries are. This could potentially add delay to incident clearance.

The Police investigation will continue after the clearance of the scene with the potential for the Police to require further information from various sources.  For example, the Highways Agency and its Service Providers may be interviewed or be required to supply information regarding the state of the network prior to the incident.

Each organisation has its own procedures for the attendance at incidents where investigation work is required. The Traffic Officer Service procedure for Collision Management (Police Led) has recently been updated. Service Provider Contingency Plans and/or incident response processes should promote evidence preservation.

Thanks go to Surrey Police Collision Investigation Unit for their contribution to this article.