The growing number of cars fitted with advanced driver assistance systems and semi-autonomous driving functions is providing collision investigators with richer data, Fleet200 Strategy Network members were told at the latest meeting.

Cars that feature the latest assistance systems record significant amounts of data at the point of a collision, which enables investigators to build a more accurate picture of what happened.

The data can then by analysed and used to drive improvements in road and car safety.

Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) operates the Road Accident In-Depth Studies (RAIDS) programme for the UK Department for Transport.

Since 2012 it has been collecting data on how and why people are injured.

Richard Cuerden (pictured), director TRL academy, said: “We can join up the collision data from police with hospital data, insurance data and our own data to better understand casualties and what can be done to prevent them.”

RAIDS investigators work with the Police to study collisions and understand what caused injuries.

They look at multiple factors about the vehicles, people and conditions. More than 300,000 pieces of information are brought together and entered into a database.

The data can be used as evidence to inform type approval regulations and to understand how introducing certain features to vehicles can prevent collisions or casualties.

European Parliament introduced new regulations, such as driver attention monitoring and speed limit assist, based on RAIDS data.

Cuerden added: “The power of this data is massive. It changes the way vehicles come to market.”

TRL is currently working with the Police to understand how to download and analyse the richer data from vehicles with such systems.

It means breaking into data from vehicles to understand what the vehicle was doing at the time of collision.

Cuerden explained: “We have to effectively break in to the vehicle to get the data.

"The level of information we have has grown significantly. If we start to take seriously the event data recorder data and mandating that, then my team won’t have to break in to get that data and it can be obtained via an approved channel.”

Withing 12-24 months time, Cuerden warned that the data available to fleets could be overwhelming.

“You’ll have telematics data, video data and data from the vehicle. Future collision investigation will be a challenge. There will be a lot of information,” he said.