Establishment of a body to analyse road collisions in a manner similar to the existing accident investigation branches for rail and air has long been called for by groups including the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety.

Government proposes that the branch would carry out ‘thematic investigations’ and probe specific incidents of concern to establish the causes of collisions and make recommendations to improve safety in the future.

“We have been advocating this since the turn of the Millennium,” said PACTS executive director David Davies. “The Department for Transport’s attitude has previously been that the police do accident investigation, so we don’t need an investigation branch.

“They have done a 180 degree policy change over this and we are delighted.” He suggested that priority areas of focus for the new branch could include investigating serious collisions involving heavy goods vehicles or travel for work – with scope to issue recommendations to employers – as well as incidents in urban areas which see injuries to pedestrians and cyclists.

Government says the consultation – which closes on 9 December – is being launched now due to major developments taking place within transport such as the roll out of increasingly automated and electric vehicles.

RAC Foundation director Steve Gooding commented: “After excellent progress across many years, sustained road safety improvement has been hard to achieve over the past decade. We should be challenging ourselves on whether we are understanding all we can about the causes of road collisions and what could be done to prevent them, which is why this consultation is so important and so welcome.”

Road safety charity Brake’s head of campaigns Jason Wakeford said: “Currently, information about the perceived cause of a road crash is recorded by police at the time of a collision, but only provides basic insights which simply are not adequate to properly investigate and determine the most effective counter measures to tackle future road casualties.

“We have long advocated for an independent agency to provide the necessary evidence to learn from crashes and we applaud the Department for Transport for launching this consultation.”

Also this week, PACTS has urged caution over any plans to legalise the use of private e-scooters on UK streets.

The group emphasises that evaluations of electric scooter rental trials currently under way across the country “cannot and should not” be used to set regulations for private scooters, which it says are different in both their construction and use.

(Photograph: Stephen Barnes - Shutterstock)