Adrian Runacres

Investigations & Risk Management Consultant

Adrian runs his own independent consultancy business undertaking incident investigations and providing risk management advice in the highways and transportation sector. His specialisms include highway maintenance, collision reconstruction, road safety and the weather. Adrian also conducts and oversees research in his specialist fields and has provided technical and strategic input to a number of national highway maintenance standards and best practice guidance documents, including those relating to routine maintenance and inspections, highway drainage, surface skid resistance and winter service delivery, for example.

Adrian has investigated and attended the scenes of numerous road traffic collisions and other incidents, and is frequently commissioned in an Expert capacity to undertake forensic investigations. He has therefore provided written and oral evidence at Coroners’ Inquests, Criminal Trials and at many Courts considering Civil Actions. Adrian has also led teams investigating major rail crashes, attending the scenes and subsequently providing evidence to the Railway Safety Commission, the Coroners and Courts considering the causes of these incidents.

Prior to setting up his business in June 2005, Adrian was Head of the Investigations and Risk Management Department at the UK's Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and a member of their Executive Management Committee. During this time, his Department received the prestigious AA Road Safety award from the then Secretary of State, in recognition of their work in researching and developing collision investigation techniques. Prior to joining TRL in 1998 in order to set up and run the IRM Department, Adrian was an Associate within a major multi-national transport and engineering consultancy, spending the majority of his time there in positions within the Highways Maintenance Division. Previously, he was Principal Research Assistant at University College, Swansea undertaking research into the effects of weather on road safety and the management and maintenance of the highway network.

Adrian has carried out safety inspections, detailed inspections, structural condition surveys, safety audits, safety assessments and thermal mapping surveys on many roads throughout the UK, as well as having also managed and undertaken temporary road works operations on a diverse range of road types. In addition, Adrian has designed and instructed vehicle crash tests, and has witnessed many more. Possessing a Bachelor's Degree in Geographical Science, Adrian also holds a Diploma in Forensic Road Accident Investigation awarded by De Montfort University, which focused on accident reconstruction techniques. He has also successfully completed further advanced training in these matters and is a confirmed advocate of Continuous Professional Development. He is a Member of the Association for Road Risk Management, a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation and also a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Adrian is the Technical Advisor to the National Winter Service Research Group (NWSRG), which is a technical group of the UK Roads Board, and regularly advises private and public sector organisations on their policies and systems relating to highway maintenance and road safety. He has authored approximately 30 published papers, trains highway authority personnel, the Police and members of the insurance and legal professions in his specialisms, as well as regularly presenting technical papers at conferences and symposia by invitation.