New insights from no-blame safety investigations and crash analysis
Report by Dr Tasha Prabhakar, Deputy Chair ACRS NSW Chapter
We welcomed over 60 road safety professionals to our forum on Tuesday 24th June 2025.
A brilliant panel of experts – Jim Modrouvanos, Emma Shearer, Julie Brown, and Inspector Jason Hogan provided insightful contributions to thinking about different approaches to investigate crashes and analysis of big crash data.
Jim Modrouvanos, Chief Investigator and CEO of the Office of Transport Safety Investigations (OTSI) told us that OTSI receives over 500 notifiable occurrences each year. For systemic no-blame investigations, human error and rule violations are the starting point of an investigation, not the end. OTSI employs international safety factor mapping tools that encourage recognition of complex interrelationships within the system. There is clearly plenty to consider for a road safety context!
Crash investigation inspector Jason Hogan provided us with insights into the approach of NSW Police Crash Investigation Unit. Police crash investigations into serious crashes across NSW ask who is at fault, focusing on causal chains and contributing factors.
Emma Shearer explained how Transport for NSW (TfNSW) uses the police reports for the NSW crash database. And the leading work by NSW in serious injury data including matching police crash reports with NSW Health data to better understand crash injury outcomes, and ongoing work building key data linkages to enhance our understanding of crashes.
Professor Julie Brown pointed out that road safety research over decades has included crash investigations which provide in-depth information, limits including sampling and exposure metrics. By contrast, big crash datasets provide information about the scale of the problem at the population level but with less detailed information. Each of these research approaches help to answer different questions about risk factors and protective interventions.
The quality of crash investigations is critical to understanding the most effective ways to reduce road trauma — and our discussions highlighted just how vital this work is.
The chapter acknowledges David Wakelin and the amazing team at Transport for NSW for hosting the event, and the national ACRS team for their encouragement and support of the forum.
Pictured above left to right: David Wakelin, Inspector Jason Hogan, Jim Modrouvanos, Emma Shearer, Professor Julie Brown, and Dr Tasha Prabhakar.