ABSTRACT
There are numerous studies in the literature relating to individual factors which ‘cause’ or contribute to accident occurrence, such as human factors, vehicle mechanical defects, road environmental factors etc (Petridou and Moustaki, 2000). Relatively few published studies have sought to investigate the processes by which these factors interact and lead to accidents actually occurring. Most of those that have, have either focused on only one particular type of accident or have used a number of simplifications or assumptions, both of which limit the applicability of the methodologies proposed. The reason for the sparsity and limitations of these studies is that assigning a ’cause’ to an accident is a fairly complex undertaking even in a simple case, as the following example will show.
