Glossary of Data Variables for Fatal and accident causation ... - ERSO

Manual For SafetyNet accident causation system (SNACS)
groups, dealing with all genotypes related to the conditions of the road. The
“Design of traffic environment” group contains genotypes which address how
the traffic environment has been designed.
Organisation
The group ”Organisation” contains the genotypes which concern organisation
related problems other than those shaping the immediate traffic environment.
This involves factors such working hours for professional drivers, the state’s
responsibility to educate drivers in an appropriate way, etc.
6.5.6 Links and stop rules for procedure
The purpose of the SNACS analysis is to find a probable connection among the
various factors that can explain the observed consequences or the event
phenotype. In order to do this, SNACS contains a linking system, where some
of the genotypes are linked to the phenotypes, and then again some genotypes
are linked to other genotypes. This linking system results in analysis chains
where a genotype can be both the consequent of a previous genotype, and the
antecedent of another genotype, i.e. the cause of, or reason for, the occurrence
of that genotype.
This thinking is not as complicated as it may sound. If factor A results in factor
B, and factor B in turn results in factor C, then A can be said to be the indirect
cause of C, and B can be said to be both a result of A and a cause of C. The
genotypes of SNACS can therefore function both as links forwards and links
backwards in a chain of reasoning, which makes it possible to deduce indirect
causes (as A in relation to C in the example above).
The advantages of this are obvious. If there was only a set of direct causes the
analysis would have an enormous width but no depth. Since the genotypes can
act as links however, whole chains of interlinked causes and consequences can
be deduced. You start with a phenotype (this being the end point of the chain of
causes that you want to deduce), and then the analysis moves backwards from
the event until you are either out of information about the accident, or factors
that are meaningful to the analysis.
The links from genotypes to genotypes, as well as genotypes to phenotypes,
are described in Appendix B. The linking is to be read from left to right, i.e.
genotypes in the left hand columns are reasons for or causes of the
genotypes/phenotypes in the right hand column(s). This is clearly indicated in
the tables through the heading ANTECEDENTS over the columns to the left
and CONSEQUENTS over the columns to the right.
The definitions for the phenotypes are in the phenotypes table. For technical
reasons, the definitions of the genotypes are however a bit more distributed.
The specific genotypes have their definitions and explanations under the
ANTECEDENTS heading, whereas the general genotypes have their definitions
under the CONSEQUENTS heading. In other words, if you want the definition of
a specific genotype look under ANTECEDENTS; and if you want the definition
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