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IIT Madras trains Chennai traffic police on scientific crash investigation

“Often, the human element is forgotten when investigating a crash. Through this course, we are trying to initiate a mind-set change where investigating officers will have more empathy,” said the prof

Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, is organising Training on Structured Crash Investigation using Root Cause Analysis Matrix (RCAM) for the Greater Chennai Traffic Police (GCTP).

What is the objective of the programme?

The aim of the training is to teach design thinking skills to the officers so that they can take up human factors or an empathy-based approach to understanding the main cause behind why an accident happens. This approach to scientific enforcement helps them share their hypothesis effectively.

The programme will be conducted in two parts. After the three-day training, the application of learnings on the field by the investigation officer (IO) in live cases will follow. They will need to present their findings within two weeks.

Prof Venkatesh Balasubramanian, Head of CoERS and RBG Labs, Department of Engineering Design, IIT Madras, said, “By applying design thinking principles in a co-creative environment, we hope to introduce the investigating officers to a more result-oriented approach to crash investigations. Towards this a structured framework called RCAM based on ‘Man, Machine (Vehicle), Method (of driving) and Environment (3M&E)’ model was developed by CoERS. This is a human-centric model towards arriving at a root cause.”