It is not a legal requirement for a local authority engineer to attend the scene of a fatal accident. However, in October 2007, the LA16 Form was introduced to be completed jointly by a Garda and a Local Authority Engineer following each fatal collision.
The purpose of this form is to record factual information pertaining to such collisions and quickly to establish if there are road factors which may have contributed to the collision and which need to be remedied. When completed these LA16 forms are sent to the National Roads Authority (NRA) for analysis.
Where an obvious deficiency is observed at the collision scene this can be remedied immediately by the road authority; other deficiencies may be less obvious and may require more analysis or may take more time to rectify. Photographs are also taken of the collision location and these can prove to be helpful to the NRA in subsequent analysis.