Australia will be soon be better placed to learn lessons from accidents, whether they occur in aviation, traffic, rail or industrial settings...

That's according to Associate Professor Geoff Dell from CQUniversity, who is implementing new degree programs in the developing field of forensic accident investigation from next year onwards (including on-campus and distance education options).  

LINK to recent TV coverage on the new degree programs

Associate Professor Geoff Dell and Associate Professor Yvonne Toft are leading the accident investigation programs

"The standard of accident investigation across industry is generally very poor," Dr Dell says.

"There is a wide variation in investigation methods, models and objectives applied which often results in sub-standard identification of causal factors and inadequate definition of corrective actions which leads to less than optimal implementation of preventive measures.

"The same accidents and incidents recur time and again and the lessons are missed entirely or misunderstood. To a considerable degree this may be attributed to the absence of effective investigation education and training.

"Internationally in aviation, for example, there are only two university-based applied investigation teaching programs open to industry participants. In Australia there are none."

"There are also no formal tertiary education programs in Australia addressing the broad investigation needs of the other industries. There are a number of investigation theory short courses on the market, but none have an applied science basis and few provide professional competency-based learning approaches and methodologies."

Accident investigation program team members L-R Head of Program Ryan Kift, industry reference group member Allison Hutton, Assoc Prof Geoff Dell and Assoc Prof Yvonne Toft

"The new CQUniversity suite of accident investigation degrees will satisfy this long standing education need."

Dr Dell's colleague Associate Professor Yvonne Toft says "road accidents are a clear case in point. In Australia and across the globe, there have been countless accidents and yet the accident rates remain concerning. Many investigations default to placing blame and focus on gathering evidence for prosecutions, rather than systematically analyzing the circumstances in the context of design improvement and prevention."

"The increasing popularity of crash investigation programs on television demonstrates that the public are keen to understand why accidents happen," says the Dean of the School of Health and Human Services, Professor Andy Bridges.

"We'll be teaching students how to join the growing number of professionals who have the skills to analyse the cause of accidents, and assess what's needed to prevent them re-occurring."

The new teaching and research programs will complement the safety science, OHS and human factors programs already offered by CQUniversity.