Accident_Investigation

www.irmi.com parebrise image by Jacques PALUT from Fotolia.com Accident investigators conduct investigations in such situations as road traffic accidents, industrial incidents, injuries resulting from people falling, fraudulent insurance claims and more. Training includes how to secure an accident area, gather facts and evidence, interview witnesses and victims, determine events and causes, and write reports. An incident investigation is a systematic effort to determine the answer to six key questions: what happened, when did it occur, who was involved, how did it happen, why did it happen, and how can it be prevented in the future. The first five questions are analytical in nature. They reconstruct what occurred up to the culmination of the negative event. That involves taking things apart into their constituent parts, examining them, determining their role and significance in the final outcome, and reassembly of the pertinent facts to generate a complete and as accurate as possible explanation of the chain-of-events leading up to the incident. The last question is one of synthesis, a pulling together of all the answers of the previous five questions into a coherent and comprehensive view of the event. While these are simple questions, the task of gaining satisfactory answers to them may not always be simple. Gathering Information. The primary purpose of the second stage of investigation is to gain data. Think of this as evidence collection. The duration will be dependent upon the type of investigation selected in the last step of the previous stage. A thin investigation will not require much information, while a thick investigation will require much more information. This stage also has several critical tasks to be achieved before moving on to the next stages. There is a concurrent task that should occur throughout the information gathering process. The investigator must continuously identify gaps in data and seek to bridge those gaps in the course of the three actual data gathering steps. The first step is for the investigator to study the scene of the event, to examine the physical setting and surroundings of where the event occurred. Next, the investigator should gather all the documentation that seems appropriate, such as pictures, diagrams, drawings, plans and other pertinent items. Last, the investigator questions all the witnesses. Investigators should realize that it is important to speak with all witnesses as quickly after the event as possible. As essential as is this last step, it is fraught with difficulties. These difficulties and the caveats are beyond the scope of this discussion, but will be addressed in a subsequent article. The critical caveat in this stage is to not jump to conclusions. While it is important to begin with some sense of the desired results, the investigator must also remain open to new insights that will emerge in the course of the investigation. The goal of this stage is not to determine why the accident happened, but rather to collect all information possible about the event. This stage of the investigation will start with several advantages. First, the event itself will mark a point in time when elements converged into a defined result: what happened, and when, in time, it occurred. Thus, the investigator starts with two of the five key questions already answered. Also, in conducting the examination of the details of activities leading up to that particular point in time, the investigator will have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight. What is known already, through the occurrence of the event, places boundaries on where and what needs to be examined. Therefore, they will be tracing back a chain of actions and events, in a chronological sequence, directly related to the final consequences. Knowing the “end of the trail” gives an investigator significant clues as to where to look and what to examine in peeling back time to determine the origins of the incident.