The call has taken on particular significance in light of the latest road safety figures. Thirteen people lost their lives on Aragon’s roads during July and August 2026, five more than in the same period last year, when there were eight, according to the provisional figures from the Directorate-General for Traffic.
The increase recorded over the summer comes after particularly negative months. Ten people died on Aragon’s roads in June alone, twice as many as in the same month of 2025. Across Spain, that month claimed 142 lives and became the deadliest June since 2010.
At the heart of the Institute proposal is the idea that every serious crash can also become a source of knowledge to prevent others. The body would make it possible to study crashes from a technical and multidisciplinary perspective, examining not only the immediate circumstances but also the various factors that may have played a role.
The approach is inspired by investigation systems historically used in other forms of transport, such as air, rail and maritime transport, where the technical analysis of crashes makes it possible to draw conclusions and issue recommendations aimed at improving safety.
The Manifesto was signed at the headquarters of the Official College of Industrial Engineers of Aragon
“Every serious crash must help us learn and prevent it from happening again,” said Juan José Alba, a member of the Official College of Industrial Engineers of Aragon and La Rioja (COIIAR) and vice president of the Spanish Alliance for Child Road Safety (AESVi). Alba believes crashes must be investigated from a “technical, independent and multidisciplinary” standpoint to determine what went wrong and subsequently turn that knowledge into specific prevention measures.
UNDERSTANDING THE CAUSES, NOT JUST THE TYPE OF CRASH
Alba explains that the creation of this body responds to a long-standing demand. “It is a long-standing demand in Aragonese society in the field of road safety. We have long believed that in Aragon we have the capacity, highly qualified professionals and the ability to coordinate and work together to improve the situation,” he said.
In his view, there is room for action within the autonomous community itself and to complement policies developed in other areas. “We are seeing that global policies are not producing the expected results, and we know there are many other things that can be done in Aragon using our own powers,” he maintained.
One of the main problems, according to Alba, is that the available data makes it possible to know how a crash occurred, but does not always explore deeply enough the causes that led to it. “What we usually know about crashes is a bit like the symptoms they present. We are told about head-on collisions, vehicles leaving the road and so on, but what we do not know is the origin,” he explained.
Image of a traffic crash on the A-23 Photo: Civil Guard
To illustrate his point, he turned to a medical comparison: “A fever is not the disease; it is a symptom that something is wrong. Something similar happens here: we know something is wrong because crashes are occurring.”
The Institute’s aim would be precisely to move from describing a crash to technically investigating its causes, independently of the determination of liability. “What we want is to take that step that allows us to understand the technical causes, not blame or liability. What interests us are the technical causes that led to it and, based on that, making proposals about what should be changed or improved so that the situation does not happen again,” he said.
Alba points out that this model of analysis would not be exceptional. “It is nothing new. It is done in all activities that involve an element of danger. We can talk about air transport, railways or, outside transport, nuclear power plants. Whenever there is a safety failure, we need to know why it occurred.”
BROAD-BASED SUPPORT
The demand does not come from a single organization or sector. The creation of the Institute has the backing of organizations from engineering, academia, road safety, transport, logistics, motorcycling, education, vehicle repair and traffic medicine.
Signatories include the Official College of Industrial Engineers of Aragon and La Rioja (COIIAR), the Spanish Alliance for Child Road Safety (AESVi), the EDUCATRAFIC Foundation, the UNIR Foundation for Progress, the Design for Safety research group at the Aragon Institute for Engineering Research of the University of Zaragoza, the Aragonese delegation of the International Union for the Defense of Motorcyclists (IMU), ALIA-Aragon Logistics Cluster, Mobility City, Tradime, ATARVEZ, FETRAZ, FET Aragón and the Spanish Association of Psychotechnical Medical Centers (ASECEMP).
The diversity of the groups that have joined is one of the arguments used by the initiative’s promoters to defend the future body’s cross-sector nature. The aim is for crash analysis to go beyond a single field and allow for a joint study of issues related to roads, vehicles, user behavior and the circumstances surrounding each crash.
Alba also focuses on the condition of infrastructure and calls for safety analysis not to focus exclusively on driver behavior. “We are encountering genuine potholes and holes in the roads. Our legislation protects us as citizens and establishes that roads must be kept in the best possible condition,” he said. “It is not enough to say that a crash occurs because the speed was not appropriate. Yes, we have to adjust our speed, but we must also demand that roads be kept in suitable condition.”
AN INITIATIVE OPEN TO NEW SUPPORTERS
The initiative began to take shape after the hearing held on June 3 in the Committee on Citizen Hearings and Human Rights of the Aragonese Parliament, where various organizations expressed their concern about road safety in the region and proposed moving toward this model of investigation.
Since then, the manifesto has continued to attract supporters and remains open to new companies, associations and institutions. Members of the aforementioned committee of the Aragonese Parliament were also invited to the signing ceremony.
Regarding the proposal’s political prospects, Alba recalls the receptiveness shown in the Parliament. “All the groups were unanimous in believing that this should be supported in some way. What we are doing is reminding everyone that we must move forward,” he said.
The initiative was presented to the Aragonese Parliament on June 3. File image of the chamber
The next step will be to expand social and institutional support for the initiative. “From now on, our job will be to try to bring together all the institutions that want to join and to keep reminding people that our society needs this now,” he said.
The vice president of AESVi maintains that Aragon can make progress in this area without having to assume the same powers as other autonomous communities with their own road safety bodies. He cites Catalonia, Navarre and the Basque Country and says the Aragonese proposal aims to make use of areas in which the region already has the capacity to act. “Without having to demand those specific powers, there are mechanisms to complement what is being done at the national level. We can talk about healthcare, education or labor. There is a great deal we can do there,” he explained.
The workplace is precisely one of the areas that, according to Alba, deserves particular attention. Faced with short-term fluctuations in monthly figures, he believes it is more useful to observe medium- and long-term trends. “When the figures are small, any slight change gives us very large percentages. We are concerned about trends: where we were ten years ago and where we are now,” he said.
CONCERN OVER WORK-RELATED ROAD CRASHES
In this context, he expressed particular concern about the trend in work-related traffic crashes. “In Aragon, especially in the workplace, we have a serious problem. Work-related traffic crashes are rising sharply. We may be containing crashes overall, but the specific figures for workplace incidents are warning us that something needs to be done,” he maintained.
The proposal comes as the data continues to highlight the human cost of crashes. The latest DGT figures show that, although road deaths across Spain through the end of August fell by 2% compared with 2025, Aragon recorded five more fatalities this summer than a year earlier.
Against this backdrop, the organizations promoting the initiative are proposing an additional step: not merely counting crashes, but investigating them systematically so that the conclusions reached can be turned into new prevention tools.
