As a mobility company, which provides various products to help its customers in their daily lives, Honda has always placed the highest priority on safety and is actively pursuing its goal of providing “Safety for Everyone” who uses the road.
Concerned about the increase in road fatalities in Asia, the Japanese automaker announced that it has commenced a 4-year in-depth investigation on accident causes in an effort to help reduce the death toll in Asia and Oceania. Honda is starting these investigations in Thailand, which is ranked* highest in Asia for death toll in road accidents and plans to expand its research to other countries in the region at a later stage.
The investigation is conducted by the Thailand Accident Research Center (TARC), which specializes in road accident research and analysis, from 2016 to 2020, covering a total of 1,000 cases. The results obtained through these investigations will be used “to improve safety technologies and contents for safe riding and driving education with an aim to provide enhanced on-road protection for motorcycles and cars,” says the automaker.
“Honda is committed to realizing a ‘traffic collision-free society’, where everyone can safely share the road and enjoy the freedom of mobility. The high accident toll in Asia is an issue which needs an urgent solution. Therefore, Honda has decided to conduct a thorough study in the hope of finding the root cause of accidents and determining the appropriate course of action for them. “We believe that these in-depth accident investigations in Thailand will result in valuable findings, which will help improve the road safety and contribute towards reduction in fatalities in Thailand and across the region,” said Mr. Noriaki Abe, Operating Officer – Chief Operating Officer, Regional Operations (Asia and Oceania).
In Thailand, the investigations will be conducted in 4 major provinces with high accident toll, namely Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Nakhon Ratchasima, and Songkhla, and 1,000 real accident cases will be evaluated over 4 years from 2016 to 2020.
Honda has provided TARC with the scope of the study, and TARC carries out the on-site investigations using their research methodology, analyzes the data, and will provide Honda with the first report by the end of 2017.
Honda and TARC conducted a pre-study on the causes of traffic accidents, evaluating 30 cases in early 2016. The know-how obtained during the pre-study has provided guidelines for the new large-scale investigations.
The Japanese automaker expects the findings from these investigations will help define the root causes of road accidents, based on which Honda will use to develop most effective safety technologies for all types of transportations it provides, and the most suitable safety educational contents to promote safe driving habits.
*From Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015 by World Health Organization (WHO)
