The Department of Transport’s Vehicle Inspectorate examines approximately 1,800 accident involved vehicles each year to establish whether vehicle condition contributed to the cause of the accident. The majority of these vehicles are heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), buses and coaches. The information may be used by the Vehicle Inspectorate to investigate vehicle safety defects of a design or manufacturing nature. The information collected from the vehicle examinations is coded and entered onto a computer database.

This paper describes how the information is collected, coded and subsequently used to identify vehicle safety concerns or to provide information used in formulating government policy. The strengths and limitations of this method of collecting and analysing this data are described and examples used to illustrate these.

Lessons learned about data collection, coding, and accessing of the information are included. Future development of all these areas is described in the paper including the move to place greater emphasis on the secondary safety aspects of vehicle examinations.