Council pioneers data analysis system in Scotland

12.00 | 16 April 2014 | | 12 comments

Argyll and Bute Council has invested in a new accident management and data analysis software system to help reduce the number of casualties and serious injuries on its roads.

The new system, MAAPcloud, has been developed by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) to support local authorities, police forces and other road safety stakeholders in making road safety investment decisions.

The system utilises modern cloud-based technologies, with all data stored on secure remote servers with regular back-ups, alleviating concerns about security or updates. 

MAAPcloud is being pioneered in Scotland by Arygll and Bute Council, and TRL anticipates that this will lead to the roll-out of the system across the country.

For more information contact Sarah Bailey at TRL on 01344 770141.

Transport Research Laboratory (TRL)
TRL is recognised world-wide for transport innovation, evidential research and impartial advice. Established in 1933 as part of the UK Government, TRL is now commercially independent with more than 80 years of knowledge and experience embedded in its history.

 

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    Perhaps another opportunity to say that many years ago LAs began painting yellow lines at junctions in order to stop vehicles illegally parking, ie being dangerously parked and causing both actual and visual obstruction from any driver wishing to come out of the junction, particularly those turning right.

    However in many cases they only painted 5 yards or a little more away fro the apex. Should they not have painted the distance stated in the Highway Code of 32 ft (or nowadays 10 meters)? By not doing so are they not allowing or enabling drivers to park after the lines finish even though it’s still within the previous 32ft so called illegal limit.

    Maybe that is why we still have plenty of smidsys as it’s difficult to view the road particularly to the right if vehicles are parked to close.

    Perhaps this would be identified by MAAP as a consequence of all the incidents and collisions at such junctions, there must be a belief that there is something wrong with them other than human error.


    bob craven Lancs
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    We have come across several cases where traffic authorities have developed speed limit policies which reject or misrepresent DfT guidance on setting local speed limits. In such cases they may well be creating a liability for the authority where a speed limit misinforms the driver of the anticipated risks and hazards.


    Rod King, 20’s Plenty for Us
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    Gorringe vs Calderdale states: “People must accept responsibility for their own actions and take the necessary care to avoid injuring themselves or others.”

    Rod King is right to quote Yetkin vs Newham 2010. The key quote is…
    “This highway authority owed a duty to all road users (whether careful or negligent) to use reasonable care in the manner in which it exercised its powers…”

    As well as negligent individuals, there are legitimate highway users who “lack capacity” including children and people with disabilities – the latter are covered by the Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act. 2010.

    This is an area of developing law.

    It is possible through the way highways are designed and managed to improve public health through encouraging walking and cycling, and by enabling highways to be easier for elderly people to use, to have an impact on the massively increasing adult social care costs. The area based approach to reducing road danger has much to commend it.

    There are huge opportunities for people involved in highway design and management to take a lead in helping society to tackle these issues.


    Robert Huxford, London
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    Ultimately, any court case in these circumstances relies on the test of “reasonableness”. Was it reasonable for an authority to anticipate x or y circumstances? Was the available remedy reasonable to expect of the authority? Has a road user behaved reasonably? In terms of highway engineering, repairs and improvements, an authority needs to undertake their statutory duties and have a system of analysis and remedial measures in place. They do not have and cannot reasonably be expected to undertake, all possible measures every year to resolve all identified issues. Apart from anything else this is neither affordable nor achieveable in reality – therefore not reasonable. However, they must have a robust and defensible system in place that guides what they do and how they prioritise works. Not having any system at all would not be reasonable and would, therefore, be culpable.


    Honor Byford, Chair, Road Safety GB
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    Mark
    Here is the Yetkin v London Borough of Newham civil case where the Court of Appeal finds council liable to pedestrian after failure to cut back vegetation on highway. What was notable was that the court ruled that the local authority had a duty of care to negligent and diligent road users.

    http://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2917:court-of-appeal-finds-council-liable-to-pedestrian-after-failure-to-cut-back-vegetation-on-highway&catid=63:planning-articles


    Rod King, 20’s Plenty for Us
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    The new element of MAAPcloud is the cloud part as MAAP and other similar collision database programmes have been around for several decades but with improved graphical front ends becoming available at an affordable price in the last decade. What the cloud bit does is to ensure that all the users have the same data, corrected where errors are noticed, without having to copy files between machines and other time consuming activities, or relying on a few specialists to produce reports.

    I note that RTM has been cited as meaning that all clusters will disappear before any work is done. Having been involved for a long time in an area where sites selected by cluster have been on a waiting list for many years I can assert that many high ranking schemes remain so for a long time and do not see a reduction in casualty rate until work is done. These sites also tend to be ones where there is a pattern to the cause of the collisions (i.e. misjudged right turns accounting for most of them – rather than a wide range of causes and collision types) thus making it easier to devise a scheme to address the issues.

    I note the comment that allowing people to know that a site had been identified but had not been treated would leave a highways agency open to being sued. Firstly, most authorities maintain and publish a scheme waiting list so the information is out there, and the site “www.crashmap.co.uk” provides public access to the (very) raw data used by highway authorities.

    Secondly, it has been proved in the High Court that the primary duty for road safety lies with the road user and that the highway authority does not have a duty to make the road safe, but to analyse road collisions and to have a programme of improvements. They do have a duty of care to maintain the highway and this is the reason more is spent in claims than in putting right potholes and uneven footways.

    However, if a scheme was put in that was clearly (for instance the problem being raised in Road Safety Audits) going to be dangerous and somebody died then there may be a case for Corporate Manslaughter. (I am not a lawyer and your mileage may vary and other caveats apply).


    Mark, Caerphilly
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    One of the most interesting results of my analysis of when and where 6m injury accidents happened from 1987 to 2011 is that, with almost clinical precision, no group of sites selected for higher than normal KSI in any 3 year period ever shows the same abnormal results again. Another is that in total the abnormal total return to normal the moment the selection period ends.

    One academic widely experienced in such statistics tells me that while regression to the mean theory, well understood for 100 years, predicts it is most useful to see the theory confirmed on a very large scale. Another academic confirms the same about another important result, that (allowing for trend) the post-selection normal total is consistently the same as the pre-selection total.

    The relevance here is that these clusters referred to here are transient effects which disappear before the remedies can be applied, rather like flies vanish before the rolled up newspaper arrives.


    Idris Francis Fight Back With Facts Petersfield
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    Whilst looking at casualty statistics on maps one is often drawn to the clusters. When you only have micro engineering or targeted interventions then this can be useful in directing resources.

    However in many places the biggest “cluster” is the “unclustered” casualties. And it is for these that wide-area interventions are appropriate. Often the “bigger picture” can tell us far more than the microscopic view and provide far better value-for-money.

    Similar approaches are taken in public health whereby small interventions on a large part for the population can be provide substantial benefits and excellent cost effectiveness.


    Rod King, 20’s Plenty for Us
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    Duncan
    On the other hand the system might be used to better identify where limited resources might be most effectively spent in order to reduce collisions and casualties.


    Nick Rawlings, editor, Road Safety News
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    My concern with all these fancy systems is that they may spot clusters, but it then leaves humans to try and work out what those clusters mean. These humans will then have to work with often conflicting goals and always with bugetary constraints which might well render the whole thing pointless.

    If the system identifies a dangerous junction that needs realigning, but there is no budget to do so, will the results be buried in case anybody has an accident and sues the authority? Much better to make the analysis tool available to everybody regardless of affiliation so that valuable work can be carried out and real lessons learnt.


    Duncan MacKillop, Stratford on Avon
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    Another analysis tool? Is this radically different from what LAs can already do? There can be a danger of not being able to see the wood for the trees, due to data overload.


    Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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    In a world abundant with data, the weak point in the field of road safety is still the quality of the analysis of interventions. Systems such as MAAPcloud can allow ever more sophisticated and detailed cluster analysis to find sites for interventions but the system cannot accurately determine the effect of any intervention that was performed as a result.

    The MAAPcloud system could play a major role in genuinely improving road safety if the interventions at the sites so identified were installed within scientific trials. Doing so would provide the feedback that could bring road safety up to the standards required and achieved in other fields of safety engineering.
    http://speedcamerareport.co.uk/02_scientific_trials.htm


    Dave Finney, Slough
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